Mater tells HSE it needs an extra €5m

Hospital funding: The Mater hospital in Dublin has told the Health Service Executive (HSE) that its official financial allocation for the year is €5 million less than it needs to maintain existing service levels.

The hospital's budget for the year has been set at €210.8 million. However, €2.1 million of this has been withheld by the HSE, pending the achievement of agreed targets regarding A&E, hygiene and MRSA.

Hospital management has told the Mater board the allocation did not include any provision for service developments for 2006 or funding for increased use of new technologies. Management forecast the hospital could face a shortfall of €18.4 million if these measures were implemented.

An internal hospital report reveals the Mater board has directed management to write to the HSE to argue that it needed a minimum of €215 million in 2006 to maintain the same level of service and a further €13 million (€228 million in total) "to deliver what we would plan and are capable of delivering in the interest of patients".

"It should be pointed out that we are not taking any action until the outstanding anomalies that this situation presents have been resolved," the Mater board report stated.

The board decided management should proceed to issue budgets to divisions in the hospital "on the understanding that these will be rigorously maintained".

A Mater hospital spokesman said that discussions with the HSE on budgets for the year were continuing.

The revelations of tensions between the Mater hospital and the HSE over its budget for the year comes in the wake of disclosures that some HSE regions were considering the introduction of new spending restrictions after hospitals recorded significant financial overruns in the first two months of the year.

An internal financial analysis drawn up for the board of the HSE last month revealed that overruns of up to 47 per cent were recorded on expenditure by some hospitals in January and February.

Regionally, hospitals in the HSE North Eastern area fared worst, with a collective overrun of 21.1 per cent over their official budget for the first two months of the year.

The HSE said that management in hospitals in the northeast were examining options to help them operate within approved funding allocations for this year.

Nationally, the hospital with the largest individual overrun in the first two months was St Columcille's in Dublin which, according to the report, spent over €2 million, or 47 per cent, more than its official budget of €4.297 million for the period in question.

The HSE report said that, overall, in the first two months of the year, the National Hospitals Office of the HSE spent €51 million more than its official budget of €584 million for the period.