Beaumont says it is facing €14m shortfall

Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, has claimed it is facing a €14 million funding shortfall this year despite a 3.5 per cent boost in its annual budget.

The hospital, in correspondence with the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA), said it had overspent more than €2.5 million on medicines, surgical supplies, blood products and other services in the period January to May 2002.

During the same period, it said it had a funding shortfall of €2.8 million, leaving a total over-spend of €5.3 million.

"A continuation of the current trends would lead to an over-spend against the current allocation of up to €14 million for the year as a whole," the hospital's chief executive, Mr John P. Lamont, wrote.

The correspondence, released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act, highlights the ongoing tension between Dublin's main acute hospitals and the ERHA over financing.

Last June, the five major teaching hospitals in the capital - Beaumont, the Mater, St James's, St Vincent's and Tallaght - held a group meeting with the authority on the issue. Collectively, they were said to have been facing a budgetary shortfall of €50 million for the year.

In a letter from Beaumont to the ERHA last April, the hospital warned that its provisional allocation from the authority fell so far short of its baseline requirement that it would be unable to pay its suppliers by May 31st last.

The ERHA replied that it was "very surprised" at this statement. "We would expect that your hospital would enter commitments with suppliers in line with the allocation from this authority," it wrote.

A spokesman for Beaumont said yesterday that the situation did not ultimately arise whereby payments were not made to vendors. All bills which needed to be paid had been paid, he said.

As regards the hospital's overall budgetary position, the spokesman said there had been some improvement arising from discussions with the ERHA. However, he said, "significant outstanding issues" remained to be resolved.