The health service will this year come in on budget for the first time in a number of years, the Minister for Health Simon Harris has said.
Speaking at the Irish Hospital Consultants Association’s anual conference in Kilkenny, he said this would mean any additional money he could secure in the Budget for next year and subsequent years could be used for service development rather than “simply plugging a black hole” of a financial deficit.
“Ministers for Health who stood here at your conference in the past, the first call on any additional resouces they received for the health service has been todeal with the overrun. This year we are going to break that cycle.”
The Minister said that this was due in no small fact to the allocation of an additional €500 million to the health service during the summer.”
The Minister said while there had been a decrease of five per cent in the numbers of patients on trolleys in hospital, this still was not good enough.
Mr Harris said a new review of bed capacity which he is to commission shortly would aim to provide a clear figure of the number of beds required not only in each hospital but across the entire health spectrum.
The Minister said he would legislate this year in relation to “open disclosure” when things went wrong in hospitals.
“I said during the week that I thought it was shameful the way people are treated in our health service when they go through a tragic experience.That was in relation to how our system responds, let me be very clear. I have seen the most compassionate clinicians and healthcare professionals dealing with people in the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances.”
“But it is not acceptable that we then drag people through the court system. It is not acceptable that people who go through the most horrific tragedy arising from what they rightly expected would be a joyous event would then have a system that drags on the grief, frustration, the stress, the pain and the worry for years.”
“That is why I am going to legislate this year in relation to underpinning open disclosure.”
The Minister said the Government had committed to tackling the rising cost of clinical claims, and was establishing an expert group to examine this issue.
“ This group will be tasked to report within six months on options for reforming the law of torts and the current claims process, particularly when it comes to birth injuries, catastrophic injuries and injuries that can result from vaccination.”
“The report of the expert group will be important as we want to ensure that patients who have been damaged are properly compensated and also ensure that the funding expended on legal costs and awards is effectively spent.”
Mr Harris said this work was in addition to a suite of tort reform measures that were currently underway in collaboration with the Department of Justice and Equality.
“The reforms include legislation for the courts to provide awards in the form of periodic payment orders to those who have suffered a catastrophic brain injury, or a birth injury.”
