A company that received almost €55 million from the State to tackle hospital waiting lists sought direct talks with Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill and lobbied several Ministers as new controls were imposed on the scheme.
EHF29 Ltd is a major supplier of hospital insourcing services. Insourcing involves private companies receiving State funds to pay public healthcare staff to treat waiting list patients at night-time and weekends. These companies use public hospital equipment and facilities.
The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), the public body that procures the services, suspended payments at some hospitals, and the HSE moved to tighten the regime following controversy over governance issues and potential conflicts of interest.
In a September letter to Ms Carroll MacNeill, EHF29 founder Dr Ken Walsh said the company employed “rigorous oversight measures for all insourcing activity, ensuring appropriate checks and balances are in place”.
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Dr Walsh, formerly a consultant anaesthetist and clinical director of Cork University Hospital, said the company had co-ordinated the care of 290,000 public waiting list patients.
He went on to say “less than 3 per cent of HSE consultants and 1 per cent of HSE staff work with EHF in a month”. Such figures suggest EHF worked with significant numbers of HSE staff, including consultants, as some 150,000 people are employed in the public health system, including 4,600 hospital consultants.
Other records show that business consultants Drury lobbied some two dozen politicians, including 10 senior and junior Ministers, to discuss the role of insourcing and EHF’s contribution to reducing waiting lists.
EHF did not respond to requests for comment.
Separate files, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show a row behind the scenes between the NTPF and Beaumont Hospital in Dublin after the fund suspended insourcing payments to the hospital in the spring.
Beaumont chief executive Anne Coyle told the NTPF in an April letter that NTPF invoices for patients seen in a rheumatology clinic were part of the “core” working week. “This was never additional capacity nor was it a waiting list initiative.”
This led the NTPF to express concern about “potential financial irregularities”, which Beaumont disputed.
“No evidence of financial irregularity has come to light, and we reject the inference that the hospital has engaged in such matters absent any evidence,” said Beaumont chairwoman Pauline Philip.
NTPF chairman Don Gallagher complained of “fundamentally conflicting” assertions from Beaumont, saying money claimed for the clinic was for additional activity under insourcing arrangements. The fund had no comment on the correspondence.
Beaumont is known to have reimbursed €25,000 to the NTPF in October after a HSE audit, but an additional audit is looking at the hospital’s insourcing in seven other medical specialities.
A spokesman for Beaumont declined to say whether NTPF funding suspended in April had been restored.
“The status of the ongoing audit is that it is ongoing and hasn’t concluded yet. Beaumont has a very good working relationship with the NTPF,” he said.
