home » media centre » press releases

HSE service plan leaves many questions unanswered

Issued : Monday 8 February, 2010

The Service Plan published today by the HSE raises as many questions as it answers.

The Plan identifies €106m in non-pay cuts on top of the €750m in cuts last year, but quite how this will work in reality is not at all clear.

The Plan targets a reduction of over 33,000 in emergency admissions to hospitals, but doesn't give any details as to how that will actually be achieved, other than a brief reference to the development and implementation of a range of initiatives aimed at "emergency admission avoidance".

My fear, grounded in experience, is that with these targets in place and in the absence of any alternative structures, emergency services in hospitals will suffer, with hospitals under pressure not to make admissions.

There may well be potential to reduce hospital admissions through the use of facilities such as "medical and surgical assessment units", but nowhere in the document, is there any explanation as to where any such new units will be situated and how they will be funded.

Prof Brendan Drumm today said that the HSE were in the process of restructuring, but it should not be forgotten that a comprehensive range of restructuring proposals were presented to the Government by the HSE workers and their representatives in the pay talks before Christmas. The Government rejected those proposals and has left the job of managing our health services even more difficult than it should be.