The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has described as “simplistic” the suggestion by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly that the extended hours hospital consultants can be rostered to work under the new contract approved by Cabinet last week will be enough to make a major impact on waiting lists.
Mr Donnelly has said the new contract, which provides for salaries of up to €252,150 for consultants who sign up to the new terms, would make Ireland “one of the most attractive places for healthcare professionals to work worldwide”.
The IMO, however, said it was not convinced the new contract would attract the numbers of new consultants required and said that while the offer addressed significant issues for those of its members who started working in the public system after 2012, a great many other problems in hospitals would still need to be tackled.
Responding to Mr Donnelly’s prediction of a “positive impact on patient outcomes through the availability of clinical decision-makers outside of traditional working hours”, as envisaged under the plan, the chair of the IMO’s consultants committee, Prof Matthew Sadlier, said that “to suggest that moving a consultant from working on a Monday to working on a Saturday will make a significant difference to patient care is too simplistic and not sustainable without more consultants and investment in capacity”.
READ MORE
“Moving consultants to different hours will not fix the problems in the health services or reduce patient waiting times in a service where there are too few beds, too few doctors and other healthcare professionals and increasing demands,” he said.
In a letter to the organisation’s consultant members last week, and seen by The Irish Times, Prof Sadlier said the IMO had secured “significant changes” to the draft consultants’ contract published by Government in May 2021, telling members that attempts had been made to treat consultants with different areas of expertise differently, an attempt to require overtime to be worked had been rejected as had an initial attempt to have consultants rostered 24/7.
The proposal now envisages rostering between 8am and 10pm on weekdays and until 6pm on Saturdays but there is some concern that if insufficient numbers of consultants sign up to the contract this will not be possible to implement in many situations.
The IMO letter, the start of a consultation process which is set, like that being organised by the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, to run into January, outlined much of the detail contained in the proposed contract including overtime and Sunday or bank-holiday working premium rates of 1.5 and twice the basic hourly rates respectively. Working after 8pm on a weekend evening attracts an additional payment of one sixth of the hourly rate. Consultants would be paid up to €38,000 for being called out and education supports worth €12,000 a year are offered.
It is envisaged that 25 per cent of rostered time would be spent on “non-clinical activities including teaching, research, professional development”.
Prof Sadlier said the letter reflected the organisation’s feeling that the latest offer reflected a considerable improvement on what had previously been on the table but that significant doubts remain about whether it will be good enough enable the HSE to fill the current 900 vacant consultants’ positions.
“Irish consultants are being actively recruited by health systems abroad which are better resourced and enable consultants to care for patients along with offering extremely attractive conditions and ability to work in large teams which leads to less onerous commitments over and above contracted hours. Whether this contract enables the level of recruitment we need remains to be seen,” he said.
