Harney plans new regulatory regime for hospitals

Minister for Health Mary Harney yesterday signalled her intention to introduce a new regulatory framework for hospitals in the public and private sectors.

She said that at present anyone could establish a hospital and there was a role for the State in the area of regulation and that accreditation could not merely be voluntary.

"People who avail of services have to know that they are run to the highest possible standards," she told a conference on private funding in health.

Ms Harney said her policy of encouraging private investment in the health sector did not represent the introduction of an alien or American-style system into Irish hospitals.

She said about €17 billion would be spent on healthcare here this year, of which 72 per cent would be funded by the State through taxation and the health levy. She said the balance would come from the private sector through insurance and direct payments.

She said that far from this being "odd, unsustainable or American", Ireland was almost exactly at the OECD average of 73 per cent public, 27 per cent private finance for health.

Ms Harney said that she envisaged this mix of funding continuing in roughly the same proportions. She strongly rejected suggestions that her plan to move 1,000 beds for fee-paying patients from public hospitals into new private centres to be developed nearby, represented a form of privatisation.

She said this could not be privatisation when its central objective was to deliver 1,000 new public beds. The private and public sectors would work together in the new co-located facilities, she added.

Shortly after Ms Harney's address, the conference was disrupted by members of Ógra Sínn Féin who released stink bombs in the hall. They also read a statement criticising private sector involvement in health and said that this was aimed at making profits from people's pain and suffering.