If they start cutting from the top..it will make sense,cos they have been hitting the poor very hard since 2008 and nothing have change

In a similar way. The CEO of Jack & Jill has proven that if the HSE fund him, he can save them a multiple of four times (roughly) that in hospital costs. If they give him €4 million he’ll save them €16 million. Can he get any money out them? What do you think?

I agree, middle management are not only an unnecessary expense but are also a hindrence to the day-to-day running of the HSE by lower paid staff.

The majority of people who actually turn up at A&E don’t really need to be there, it’s treated as a walk in clinic for medical card holders….

@nocturnal paramedic. I wnet o A and E in limerick one Sunday in January. I had suffered with severe abdomen pain all year and I was told to cut back on drink. I haven’t drank alcohol in 5 years 9 except 1 glass of wine Christmas). After a cursory examination I was told to go home. Later that night I was on the floor and couldn’t breath with the pain. My partner rang an ambulance and he was told they were very busy to try go to the hospital myself. I was at the point of panic and sever pain that I could hardly breath. My partner rang the ambulance fearing the worst and the operator said to “stop wasting their time” and hung up. I eventually got an ambulance an hour later. They made me walk with no assistance to the ambulance and i was doubled over in pain. They took no reading, blood pressure, history ,nothing. I sat in a chair in absolute agony because of the movements of the ambulance on the road. When I arrived at A and E There were two ambulance men smoking outside the door in uniform and they joked and chatted with the driver who opened the back door and walked away and left me creep at a snails pace out of the ambulance and into the hospital. I collapsed on the floor and was helped into the waiting room. I was moaning on the ground and could barely breath and a woman who saw me there for an hour kept pleading for someone to help me. Eventually I was rushed to x ray and a doctor said this to me while I was on the trolley. She said your Pancreas is very swoolen and that is not good. Then she walked away and I was given injections of pain killers and then I passed out. I was in hospital for 9 days getting the inflammation down and 6 weeks later had to have my Gall Bladder removed. All I think about was the ambulance operator saying stop wasting our time. I am a medical card holder only for the last 6 months fortunately and I do now abuse the A and E but i was treated as if i was a non entity. You need to change your attitude as a health professional.

apologies for the spelling mistakes. I meant to say I do not abuse the A and E.

Some don’t, SOME, but by and large a huge amount will have been sent by their GP ! It’s an awful thing for someone to say on an open forum , as a member of emergency staff, to off handedly claim
that most do not need to be there!

Exactly Brendan. I know some people may look like they are not hurt or in pain but some are and need help. Who in the name of God would spend 4 or 5 hours waiting in A and E for a minor injury? I think the statement is totally unprofessional and an open forum as you rightly put it is the wrong place for a comment like that. Thats the kind of sweeping statement that only serves to dismiss people in waiting rooms.

My sister works in an A&E in dublin. Believe me there are a lot of people who should not go there but they do.

@ Chris. I don’t work in or near limerick so I wouldn’t have any dealings with that part of the country but you are right that was an appalling way to be treated…. Wouldn’t happen in my ambulance!!!

To the people who are lambasting me, if you actually came along on a few shifts you would actually see the rampant abuse of the system. I’m not saying ALL medical card holders abuse the system but there are certain sections of society that use an ambulance as a free ride to the hospital with minor ailments… These people do NOT need to be in an emergency department. I’m sorry of it sounds harsh but that’s the FACTS

Well next time don’t bring them if your positive that they don’t need it! and if you find yourself unsure maybe the patient is unsure of what to do! Im in no doubt people do abuse it , but a paramedic shouldn’t be talking on a public forum saying a lot of people shouldn’t be in there, it spreads a bad image of medical staff as uncaring and more bothered by patients who they have deemed to be abusing the system! That’s all!

Ok Brendan, sure we’ll all just close our eyes, stick our fingers in our ears and pretend its not happening….. And you wonder why the hse is over budget???

What you on about? Close your ears and eyes to what?

Hey brendan its not the paramedics you should be directing anger at its a combination of the people who make the rules and the people who for instance ring an ambulance to take them to outpatient appointments, or the ones who ring an ambulance to bring them to hospital so they can get a lemsip. These are the idiots who are tying up an ambulance when they dont need one and the people in charge are the ones who say every person that an ambulance goes too has to be brought in just incase they get sued for neglect or whatever! These people should be fined very heavily for wasting an ambulances time.

Not saying it doesn’t happen of course it does, every system and service is abused everywhere! But people can often be hesitant about calling for help , and a paramedic stating that most people don’t need to be there isn’t a positive message or good public image to send to send out!

Nocturnal Paramedic is right, there is rampant abuse of the system, both by patients and GP’s.
A&E is what it says it is: Accident and Emergency. Turning up with hip pain that you’ve had for the last 10 years or high blood pressure that you’ve had for 20 years is neither an accident or an emergency.
There are other units that look after that kind of stuff: AMAU, MAU, or hell, instead of taking the ticket to your A&E, how’s about going to your GP.
There should be a GP clinic positioned at every A&E in the country to attend these sort of attendees, as it would free up a lot of resources, beds and money.

The reason people go to the A&E rather than the GP nowadays, is that medical card holders are treated as second class citizens at the GP stage of the system.
Tests ,if ordered at all, as many doctors seem to have been instructed to reduce the amount of tests for medical card holders(children with eczema for example are denied allergy tests), may have waiting lists of 8 months or longer!
Going to the A&E you definitely get improved treatment and necessary follow on services as the consultant sees fit .

On a similar note. If anyone has ever listened to the boss of Jack & Jill on the radio. The HSE barely give them much funding. A J&J baby ‘costs’ €50k a year, a HSE one €200k for full time care. They cannot look after children beyond age of 4. If the HSE funded them to the tune of €4 million it would save HSE €16 million a year and still they won’t give them funding. I may have got some figures slightly wrong as the interview was a while ago but the gist runs true. Madness!!

Diarmuid perhaps you could detail the areas where the saving could be made. That would be valuable rather than just telling us where they should not be effected. I have always been a major critic of the HSE because it is overloaded with Management and lacks the agility of a small Team that can take appropriate decisions as fast as they need. Added to this we have the highest paid doctors and nurses in Europe who are the most highly unionised in Europe. So the chips are stacked against any change. The real problem is that General Practitioners are paid whether they see patients or not and in those circumstance why would they see them? This in turn leads to a thronging of Casualty units where everyone expects to be served as quick as McDonalds and defensive medicine is practiced so that a patient with chest pain stays in to avoid litigation. On top of this old people who should be discharged are allowed (let’s worry about the word later!) to use the Acute Hospital as a Nursing Home because it costs twice as much to run a Public One compared to a private one!.
Should I apply for a position as Health Supremo because you really need a bastard of the highest order who can take the urgent decisions without interference.

Get this – I had to see my GP recently to document an assault for a criminal charge.
My GP wasn’t there, she has left the clinic, so I was told I could see a different GP as it didn’t matter who saw me.
So, I meet a stranger who has a look, sees that I’m bruised, and cut inside my mouth. Writes a line of text on the pc and charges me €50.
I am then informed that the Gardaí are charged up to €200 to obtain that one line of information for the purposes of pursuing the case.

Er? WTF?? I can’t be alone in thinking that’s a tad exorbitant..

Thats right Michael. Its more than an outrage, its sheer bloody minded stupidity
Cuts to Home Help also means people who could be discharged from hospital wont be and will ‘block beds’ which cost far far more. Home help needs to be developed, which will save huge amounts of money, and result in better care for the patients. Its not rocket science, and it has been done in countries like Australia to good effect.
If they dont want to spend so much on agency staff – hire full time/ part time staff as appropriate. The recruitment moratorium has not saved money, it just mad some half wit HSE manager look like they were doing something

well said Chris

Micheal Martin’s baby? He wanted a way to distance himself from the political heap that was the Health Ministry, so it wouldn’t have harmed his chances of becoming Taoiseach down the line.

If he had played straight and acted in the best interests of his country, he may have been reviled by FF for doing so but he would not be the toxic has been in most people’s eyes that he now is.

Honesty is the best policy.

Yes, and then we can have the south eastern health board, western health board etc etc…it’ll work perfectly!
again……

The HSE remains a good idea, central decision making for the good of all, however it was badly planned, why throw the baby out with the bath-water, bring in good people and remove the wasters

Disband the goverment

Or looks like Brendan Grace with a hangover.

for a doctor he’s very over weight. You’d think he’d know better.

It seems to be a trend.. Our last Minister for Health was no picture of it either.. Between that and the minister for finance with no bank account.. It’s like visual doublespeak..

The irish Management of the health system is obviously shambolic and needs serious fixing , but i know its populist to blame everyone but i completely fail to see how or why having a cut at Angele Merkle has anything to do with how we got things into this mess , ah yeah let’s blame the Germans , the Europeans , the IMF , Jesus lets blame anyone and have a cut at them , but it ignores the facts , the irish health system has been a political football for successive Irish Governments for years…..I’m pretty sure Angele Merkle had sweet FA to do with it.

John it suits our politicans to let you think outside forces are framing our budgets,this is BS the troika dictate the bottom line but how they get there is all the handiwork of our homegrown idiots.

Well he has promised to pay all the debt to unsecured bondholders he hasn’t broken that promise.So well done him.

Why does it cost twice the cost to provide a public nursing home bed compared to a private one. If some of the arch critics on this site just paused for moment we could provide twice the beds of we ran these homes as private owners do. We could then call them Private Nursing Homes and everyone would want a bed in one……am I missing something? Ah yes let’s just blame the Minister for Health as he should have sorted all of this out after eighteen months! Let’s get real.

Well said Niall

The simple answer is paramedics should be allowed to treat and discharge. Ie if we attend a patient and we deem they don’t need to go A&E we can refer them on to the appropriate clinic/gp. This is happening in the uk. At the minute we are obliged to take the patient even if they have a broken nail….