THE HEALTH policy to build private hospitals on the grounds of public institutions must be ended, the chief executive of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has said.
In a direct challenge to Minister for Health Mary Harney, George McNeice said the principle of co-location was ill-conceived and was “never going to deliver on the principle of giving care based on medical need as opposed to the ability to pay”.
“There has never been an honest debate in this country about the privatisation by stealth of the secondary care system and the consequent downgrading of services”, he told doctors attending the organisation’s annual meeting in Killarney.
He said it was impossible to ensure social justice and equity through the “unfettered” development of private hospitals here.
“There has always been a place for private medicine in Ireland, but with a political philosophy that has actively encouraged growth in this area, the patients of this country have not been well served”.
Warning of the dangers of indiscriminate health service rationing, Mr McNeice said it will hurt services, increase waiting lists and “inevitably lead to a sicker population – now and for many years to come”.
He warned that cutbacks which were not properly thought through posed a risk to individual patients and the community as a whole.
With the Minister for Health due to make a final decision on cutting GPs’ professional fees and staff allowances, he said that by undermining the resources available in general practice, doctors would be forced to cut back on patient services, which in turn would worsen queues for outpatient and hospital emergency departments.
“It could mean job losses for practice staff. It would mean that many of the pro-bono services would be actively transferred back to the hospital sector at greatly increased cost to the exchequer.”
Referring to the current High Court action taken by the IMO against the Health Service Executive for breach of non-consultant hospital doctor contracts, Mr McNeice said the unilateral cutbacks would mean a drop of up to 40 per cent in income for junior hospital doctors. He warned that in the absence of a resolution to the issue many young Irish doctors may move abroad to work.
Former president of the IMO, Dr Christine O’Malley warned of a “perfect storm” threatening the health system. Following last week’s Health Information and Quality Authority report into Ennis hospital (which found it was unsafe for patients), the inevitable closure of the State’s smaller hospitals and the absence of co-located hospitals raised the question as to where patients who needed hospitalisation would go and who would look after them. The logical implication of the Ennis report was that GPs must refuse to refer patients to smaller hospitals on safety grounds, she added.
Separately, the consultant geriatrician at Nenagh hospital asked if the US doctors who were signing off on outsourced cervical smear reports were registered with the Medical Council here. If not, she said it raised doubts about the regulation of laboratory and other work outsourced by the health service.
A motion calling on the IMO to condemn the failure to locate specialist cancer centres in the northwest, northeast and midlands was narrowly defeated.
Proposing the motion, Louth GP Dr Ruairí Hanley labelled the decision not to have a centre north of a line from Dublin to Galway as “nothing less than cancer apartheid”. However, Waterford GP Dr Niall McNamara said what really mattered was patient outcome.