HEALTH:SOME HOSPITALS are still not using the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) as often as they could to remove patients waiting months for surgery from their waiting lists, according to the annual report from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
It says the fund agrees treatment “slots” with hospitals at the beginning of the year, but by the end of last year some 664 treatment slots given to a number of hospitals had not been used.
For example, eight places were offered by the fund to Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, for patients requiring spinal surgery. Only five were used. Similarly, the fund agreed to facilitate eight patients waiting for spinal surgery at Crumlin this year. At the end of May there were 23 patients waiting more than 12 months for spinal surgery in Crumlin, but “no patient has been referred by the hospital to the NTPF”.
The fund arranges and pays for treatment for public patients on a waiting list for more than three months. The report points out that the accuracy of some hospital waiting lists is doubtful “largely due to poor administration practices in hospitals”. It says that on average over the last five years some 26 per cent of patients on outpatient waiting lists, when contacted, no longer needed an appointment.
The report also points out that 8.5 per cent of the almost 20,000 public patients who received elective treatment paid for by the NTPF last year were referred to the fund by the same consultant who then ended up treating them privately. These treatments cost €13.5 million in 2009. In some cases this was because of the need to provide continuity of care to patients, the Department of Health told the CAG.
The CAG says the fund and the Department of Health should consider national procurement of hip and knee implants to see whether savings could be made.
Elsewhere, the report points out that no consultants have yet been fined for breaching the new consultants’ contract by treating too many private patients, even though HSE data issued in July this year suggested 33 per cent of consultants were breaching it.
It says by mid-August this year 35 consultants with private practice in excess of the authorised limits had received letters from the HSE seeking remittance of their excess private practice income, but none have yet paid up. Talks with unions on this issue are ongoing. They argue that most patients enter hospitals as emergency cases and have to be treated by consultants whether they are public or private.