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)