An additional 3,000 hospital beds will be sufficient provided other elements of our health system undergo the changes outlined in the health strategy, the secretary general of the Department of Health has said.
Mr Michael Kelly said the establishment of a national hospitals agency was an important element in developing an integrated hospital system. "I am keen to see a national waiting time database become the new marker for assessing hospital waiting lists. The new system must target those waiting for hospital treatment rather than listing waiting times by speciality", he told The Irish Times.
Addressing a conference at the Centre for Insurance Studies at UCD's graduate business school yesterday, Mr Kelly said that although the acute health sector was a high-performing one, there was a need to look at a whole system approach which would ensure the development of the "primary and continuing care sides of the service".
He confirmed that an organisational reform process, which would look at the number of existing health organisations and their interaction with one another and the Department of Health, was well under way.
Mr Kelly did not rule out significant changes both within the Department and for health boards throughout the State. "This review will be completed early in 2003."
Over 1,000 patients had been treated to date under the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) and "we aim to treat 1,900 people by the end of the year". The throughput for 2003 under the NTPF is estimated at 7,200 people with 400 patients per month being treated in the Republic and 200 per month in Britain", Mr Kelly said.
In a paper on the impact of expenditure adjustments, Mr Denis Doherty, chief executive of the Health Boards Executive, called for a meaningful debate on public and private investment in healthcare and on the return we expect from these investments. "Are we willing to engage in serious consideration of concepts around investing for social return and managing for social result? I believe that until we reach a level of understanding on these issues, healthcare will remain controversial," Mr Doherty said.
He said the current hospital distribution was a legacy of the 1940s. "If the political imperative is to maintain every hospital in the existing landscape, what requires to be done to deliver a modern acute care service and at what cost?", he asked.