Tag Archives: HSE

HSE Nursing Homes can charge over €2,000 per week

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And what of our Elderly?

And what of our Elderly?

Nursing homes run by the HSE are charging weekly fees of up to €2,139, it emerged yesterday, according to the Irish Independent.

However, it remains unclear how much an elderly person who needs to be admitted to one of these homes will have to pay if they have not been approved for a State subsidy under the Fair Deal scheme.

Confusion reigned yesterday after it emerged that the HSE, which has a budget of over €1bn to fund long-stay care this year, said this was only enough to cater for the existing 22,908 patients who were in public and private nursing homes under the scheme.

Under the Fair Deal scheme, nursing-home residents pay 80pc of their income and 5pc of the value of their assets annually for up to three years. The payments can be made either in their lifetimes or deducted from their estates after death.

But the HSE said it had drained its funding for 2011 and all new applicants would have to go on a waiting list.

Asked what would happen if an elderly person needed an emergency admission to a nursing home, a spokesperson for the HSE said they were likely to be admitted to an acute hospital or respite bed. Up to 700 long-stay patients are currently in acute beds.

The average weekly cost of a public nursing-home bed is €1,245, but it can be much higher. The weekly cost of private nursing-home care is €875 but it can be as high as €1,344.

The HSE said yesterday that 11,836 people had so far been cleared for financial support under the Fair Deal scheme and another 4,225 were receiving a subvention or were in a contracted bed. The remaining 6,400 were outside the scheme, paying 80pc of their pensions or allowances.

The HSE said the average weekly support under Fair Deal scheme per resident was €675 a week but a combination of rising demand and costs has led to it having to put a cap on the numbers it can accept for the subsidy.

However, Tadhg Daly of Nursing Homes Ireland said yesterday he estimated at least €200m had been paid by nursing-home residents to the HSE, on top of the €1bn funding.

Anxiety

“The cost drivers are coming from the public rather than the private sector,” he said. “Public-home costs are 40pc higher than the private homes. This crisis needs to be addressed quickly — there is huge anxiety out there.” Most elderly people in residential care are in private nursing homes.

Minister for Health Dr James Reilly said he was notified of the crisis in the middle of last week and was having urgent talks to try to resolve the situation.

He questioned why costs were so much higher for running public nursing homes and was gathering the facts with a view to coming up with a plan of action

Trust me – I am a Doctor………

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Trust me, I'm a Doctor

Trust me, I'm a Doctor

Doctors are the most trusted profession in Ireland, according to a new survey.

The survey, carried out by Millward Browne Lansdowne on behalf of the regulatory body, the Medical Council, showed that 88% of adults trusted doctors to tell them the truth.

After doctors, the most trusted professions were teachers, with 79% of those polled trusting them to tell the truth, followed by professors (72%); and judges (71%), the survey found.

The survey, which was conducted before the General Election in February, found TDs to be the least trusted profession (12%) followed by pollsters (25%) and business leaders (27%).

Thirty-seven per cent of people trusted journalists to tell the truth, while 32% said they would trust trade union officials to be truthful.

Fifty per cent of those polled said they trusted priests/clergymen to tell the truth.

The Medical Council survey also found that 85% of those polled felt doctors to be doing their jobs either ‘very well’ or ‘fairly well’, with 39% stating ‘very well’.

In addition, 50% of the 1,008 people polled said the experience they have with the doctor they attend most often was ‘very satisfactory’.

From next month, all doctors will have a statutory obligation to maintain their professional skills and competence

Our Health System could bankrupt our Country

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Our Health System

Our Health System

Health Minister James Reilly has warned that unless reforms are made our healthcare system alone could bankrupt the country.

“Even if we were not facing the dire financial situation this country does face, if we had no plan to reform our health service, the country would be bankrupted by the health system alone,” Dr Reilly told a major health conference in Dublin today.

He said the current level of spending on health services was unsustainable so changes must be made.

The Minister said his promised special delivery unit to tackle hospital waiting lists, which was currently being established, would have representation from the HSE and also from Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

Its core focus would be the elimination of waiting lists, the Minister said. A rigorous performance measurement process would be put in place, waiting list times would be monitored on a daily basis, and as Minister he would directly oversee the results.

He reiterated his pledge to achieve a significant reduction in waiting lists within three years .

Dr Reilly said under the Government’s reform plans, hospitals would be paid per patient seen rather than by block grant as was now the case. There would be more transparency and it will be known which hospitals were doing what and which doctors were doing what.

He said ‘money follows the patient’ would be an important step in achieving universal health insurance. Controls would be put in place to ensure the new system did not encourage ‘cherry-picking’  by hospitals.

The Minister said under the new system, everyone would have insurance from their choice of insurer. This insurance would guarantee every citizen equal access to a comprehensive range of hospital and mental health services.

Dr Reilly, who was addressing the National Healthcare Conference 2011, said the purpose of UHI was to achieve equity of access to healthcare for all.

The Minister said the Government had made a commitment to introduce free GP care for the whole population on a phased basis in its first term of office.

He said the Government must ensure there are enough GPs in place to respond to the likely increased demand for services under free GP care for all.

Dr Reilly said he wanted to see greater progress on the roll-out of new primary care teams and new primary care centres. He said a new GP contract would lead to more care shifting from hospitals to the community.

Some work currently done by GPs would move to other primary care staff while GPs would take on new work. Under a new contract, GPs would work in an integrated way with primary care teams.

Dr Reilly said the journey of reform would be towards a health service that all have access to and of which those who work in it were proud.

He said he was putting in place a plan to deal with the A&E problem, and to deal with the winter surges in activity.

The Minister said more diagnostic facilities would be put in place in the community and there would be more chronic illness care taking place in the community. This would take pressure off hospitals.

He said he had asked the NTPF to do a study on the price of beds in nursing homes that would have a full scale of facilities such as physiotherapy, so that patients could be moved out of the hospital setting and nearer to home.

This should free up a considerable number of hospital beds, he said.

The Minister said  the location for the new national children’s hospital, which was currently being reviewed, was a ‘big decision for the country’. He said it had to be ensured that the money was there to complete the the project – all the issues were being reviewed, after which he would make an announcement on the hospital. (Irish Health.com)

Medical Card Savings for HSE

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Medical Card Savings

Medical Card Savings

€76 million is the figure given for the amount of saving made as per the December 2010 Performance Report, due to spending on medical cards and other drug schemes in 2010.

These new figures have come about due to profiles of medical card holders being “less expensive than the budgeted profile”, it has been said. The Drug Payment Scheme has also been attributed to producing these savings.

The current number of medical card holders in Ireland is now just over 1.615 million, which is below that of target projections of 1.622 million. Last year alone 137,000 were granted the medical card. Where the numbers of GP visit cards is 3% over projections, it lies at 117,000.

Good news for HSE savings and the waiting time to process applications has also decreased.

Fine Gael to end Hospital Consultant massive earnings

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Fine Gael Health SpokespersonAccording to the irishhealth.com, Fine Gael’s health spokesperson Dr James Reilly has warned that massive earnings by some hospital consultants would end under the party’s universal health insurance (UHI) plan.

Under both Fine Gael and Labour’s health service plans, everyone in the population would be insured for the same level of health cover and there would be equal access to care in both private and public hospitals for everyone based on medical need alone, with free GP care also being provided for the entire population.

Labour has proposed that €75 million be clawed back from consultant salaries to help pay for free GP care, while Sinn Fein has said consultants’ public salaries should be reduced from the current €180,000 plus to €150,000.

Dr Reilly told a health policy conference in Dublin that the days of consultants taking a large State salary and an even larger private practice payout on top of that, would come to an end under Fine Gael.

“People who are earning €180,000 to €200,000, who have studied for six years to get a good Leaving Cert and then go to medical college for six years, and then train for a further 10 years – I think most people acknowledge that people who have done that have developed an expertise and are entitled to a good income. And I believe €180,000 is a bloody good income.”

“I am saying very clearly that the days of people who think they can take €180,000 out of the State and another €300,000 from the VHI will be over under Fine Gael, because it’s just not sustainable. It may upset some people, but this is a society we live in and no-one can set themselves above the rest of society. We are all taking pain and we will all share in the gain at the other end, and that is the Fine Gael position.”

The conference, attended by representatives of the main political parties, was organised by the Irish Dental Association, Irish Medical Organisation and Irish Pharmacy Union.

Dr Reilly said there was sufficient money being spent on health even with the cutbacks to give us an excellent service. “We just have not been spending the money in the right way.”

He said under the Fine Gael insurance plan healthcare would be run by private operators and there may be some not for profit global insurance operators who might enter the market as well under UHI.

“With the entire community insured we will be doubling the size of the market and that will attract more competition and I believe help control costs.”

Labour’s health spokesperson Jan O’Sullivan told the meeting that we have to reform the health service in order to get better value for money. She said Labour would introduce free GP care at the point of delivery within four years.

She said under Labour’s universal insurance scheme cover would be provided by private health insurers as well as a public health insurer. A public health insurer body would be set up but people would be allowed to keep their private insurance as well.

Both Fine Gael and Labour plan to reinstate the dental scheme for medical card patients, the meeting was told. However, Fine Gael said the funds were not there at the moment to reinstate dental care subsidies for those who pay PRSI, while Labour said it would review the matter.

Fianna Fail health spokesman Barry Andrews said he would challenge Fine Gael to outline what the true cost of universal health insurance would be. He said a couple in the Netherlands in a similar scheme had to pay €5,000 per annum for health cover.

He said he doubted whether the two-tier system would end under UHI , as people would still be able to purchase additional benefits other than those provided under the State-controlled insurance scheme.

Ruadhan MacAodhain of Sinn Fein told the meeting that his party opposed UHI as they saw it as a direct privatisation of the HSE, and the party would limit consultant salaries to €150,000 a year.

Our Student Nurses – easy targets for the Government?

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Student Nurses to strike

Student Nurses to strike

Student nurses are threatening to take industrial action in protest at Government moves to cut their pay.

The student nurses’ pay is to be cut and eventually phased out. Students currently get 80% of the minimum rate staff nurse salary during a nine-month placement in hospitals.

Under the pay cut plan, student nurses would see their pay fall cumulatively by 65% up to 2014 and be paid no salary at all from 2015, according to their union, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO)

The INMO said 6,000 student midwives and nurses in training will hold a lunchtime protest in 13 hospitals across the country on February 9.

This will be followed by a march and rally in Dublin on February 16.

The five main political parties are to be lobbied for their views on the planned student pay cuts. Nursing students are also to be balloted on industrial action up to and including strike action.

The INMO said it viewed the pay cut plan as an imposition of ‘slave labour.’

It’s goodbye to our Health Minister

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Mary Harney out

Mary Harney out

According to IrishHealth.com, Mary Harney has brought to an end nearly six-and-a half-years as Health Minister with the announcement of her resignation from the Cabinet.

She offered her resignation to the Taoiseach, which has been accepted, and has announced she will not be standing in the forthcoming general election. It had been speculated for some time that she would not run in the election.

Ms Harney said she offered her resignation to Brian Cowen last week but was told to hold off on making the announcement.

Mary Harney was appointed Health Minister in September 2004. She was previously Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment.

A former Tanaiste, Mary Harney has witnessed the demise of the party she helped found – The Progressive Democrats- while serving as Health Minister.

She is the second longest holder of the health portfolio in the history of the State, but her critics will say that after more than six years, she should have achieved more.

While she has had some limited successes as Minister – the Fair Deal nursing home funding scheme; providing for better regulation of doctors and other health professionals; reducing drug costs to some extent and bringing in doctor visit medical cards, on the big healthcare issues she has essentially failed to deliver.

Early on in her ministry she promised to resolve the ongoing A&E crisis. Years later, emergency department trolley numbers have reached record levels and the Minister continued to offer little in the way of concrete solutions to the ongoing hospital capacity crisis.

The Minister told the Dail last week: “we must become less focused on beds and more focused on activity.”

Despite her exhortation, the rest of the country was extremely focused on beds, and the lack of them. Patients were becoming less focused on beds as more and more of them got used to waiting on trolleys.

As Minister, Mary Harney presided over considerable bed reductions, which took place long before an alternative system aimed at reducing reliance on hospital beds was put in place.

Mary Harney’s plan to increase capacity in the system by decanting private beds from public hospitals into co-located private units failed. Nearly six years after she announced co-location as a quick solution to hospital capacity problems, not one co-located hospital or bed has opened.

The cancer services reorganisation is regarded as a success on Ms Harney’s watch, but much of this success was down to Prof Tom Keane. In any case, the report proposing cancer service reorganisation had lain on a shelf for years and was only activated after a number of breast cancer misdiagnosis scandals emerged during the Harney era.

Other more negative aspects of Ms Harney’s Ministry that will be rembered include:

* Failure to reform the HSE, a structure she effectively inherited from her predecessor, Micheal Martin, but whose establishment was very much in line with her reform-minded PD policy.

* Early in her ministry, the fall-out from the scandal over illegal overcharging by health authorities of public nursing home patients for many years.

* The attempt to take medical cards off thousands of over 70s.

*Frequent expressions of regret over the latest hospital care or misdiagnosis scandal and claims that hospital safety would improve despite her efforts , Mary Harney failed to convince the public that she was making healthcare provision safer.

* ‘Taxing the poor’, by introducing prescription charges. Ireland must be one of the few developed countries where those on the very lowest incomes are charged for treatment,albeit at a low rate.

* Her recent clash with Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, with the Minister insisting that the State was not legally obliged to provide public long-stay care for the elderly.

*Her failure to effectively tackle waiting list numbers, despite the NTPF, and in particular waiting times for outpatient appointments.

*Controversy over her expenditure on business trips abroad as Health Minsiter and in her previous ministry, not to mention her lengthy stay in New Zealand as the Tallaght x-ray crisis unfolded.

So is it goodbye and good riddance or just farewell?

Pregnant women advised to get Flu Vaccine

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Pregnant women and flu vaccine

Pregnant women and flu vaccine

Pregnant women, those with underlying medical conditions and the over 65′s were advised strongly yesterday to avail of the HSE’s seasonal Flu vaccine this year.

Among the ‘at risk’ group were children, particularly those in school or after school groups, adults with long term chronic illnesses eg asthma or Cardiac problems, Carers and Healthcare Staff.

Healthy pregnant women and those up to 6 weeks after giving birth who have not received the Swine Flu vaccination are among those advised to get the vaccine as they are at higher risk of complications from Swine Flu.

The HSE says ‘the flu virus changes every year and this is why a new flu vaccine has to be given annually.

Based on advice from the World Health Organisation (WHO) this year the seasonal flu vaccine contains 3 common flu virus strains, including the pandemic H1N1 – Swine Flu strain which is still circulating and is expected to be the most common strain this year.

Unlike last year, the Swine Flu vaccine is now included in the Seasonal Flu vaccine meaning only one Flu Vaccination is required this year.

This year’s Flu Vaccine can be given at any stage of pregnancy.