HSE overspent by €136m in first four months of year

The HSE recorded a financial overrun of €136.6million for the first four months of the year.

The latest HSE performance report, published on Thursday, says there was a deficit of €76.6million within core services primarily within acute hospitals and social care.

It says that about €60 million of the deficit relates to primary care reimbursement, local health schemes, State Claims Agency payments and pensions.

The HSE report says it has not been possible up to April this year to deliver cost savings that had been earmarked in its service plan for 2015 “in part because our focus has been onopening / maintaining additional bed and other capacity”.

“The sustained exceptional level of delayed discharges, the cost pressures these are causing and the level of management time and capacity taken up with dealing with this issue within our acute and social care services is beyond the level anticipated in the service plan,” it says.

“It has not been possible to deliver the necessary cost reductions up to April 2015 that the plan requires in part becau se our focus has been on opening / maintaining additional bed and other capacity. This capacity is not funded in NSP 2015 and was intended to be closed.”

The HSE said recent announcements in relation to additional funding to deal with the delayed discharge issue will impact on the 2015 overall outlook.

“The impact of unfunded regulatory driven pressures is still a significant factor within the disability and older people services that make up social care.”

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar said waiting times for hospital treatment “continue to be of concern”.

In a statement issued following publication of the HSE report, he said: “ At end-April, child waiting times for in-patient and daycases had worsened slightly and the numbers waiting for over 18 months had increased. Adult and outpatient lists have also risen. The HSE has set aside €5 million to develop waiting list implementation plans for in-patient and day cases and specific plans to address outpatient waiting lists are also being developed.”

Mr Varadkar said the performance report provided evidence of “steady, incremental progress towards targets”.

“We want a health service that puts the patient first by reducing waiting times, reducing patient experience times and enhancing patient safety,” he added.

“The steady progress on metrics like delayed discharges and in-patient admissions shows that the plans we put in place at the start of the year are beginning to take effect. We still have a long way to go but we are moving in the right direction.”