HSE National Service Plan \u2018Not up to Scratch\u2019-Crowe<\/p>\n
Dublin South West Se\u00e1n Crowe TD described the HSE National Service Plan announced by the HSE as \u2018not up to scratch\u2019 and wholly insufficient for the almost daily crisis facing the health service.\u201d The National Service Plan 2015 for the health services has been published and given full approval by the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar.<\/p>\n
The plan lays out the type and level of services that the Health Service Executive hopes to provide both directly and through agencies, funded by them.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
“By the Health Service Executive\u2019s own admission their plan will not be \u2018up to scratch\u2019 to fully address the increasing demands being placed on our hospital system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a mounting crisis facing the health service with 50,000 patients waiting for an appointment for more than a year. We have seen the waiting lists soar this year as a direct result of the earlier plan that was approved. In the first 9 months this year figures suggest that there has been a 20% increase in waiting times for inpatient cases, and the number of people waiting more than a year for an outpatient appointment rose from 9,406 in January to 46,642 at the end of September \u2013 a whopping jump of 385%. Behind all these numbers there are real people desperately hoping for a life transforming operation or specialist medical advice .There is nothing in today\u2019s plan that will reassure those waiting that numbers will be drastically reduced any time in the distant future.<\/p>\n
“The so called \u2018Fair Deal\u2019 for elderly patients continues to be underprovided for\u00a0 hard pressed\u00a0 families having to make the shortfall, stretched to breaking point. There are ongoing delays in discharging patients and this has contributed in no small way by a lack of step down beds, but the plan only offers a miserly \u20ac25 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tiny increase in numbers of doctors and nurses will be welcome, but will have no real impact considering the incremental cuts in frontline personnel in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of the other positive elements in this plan have already announced.\u00a0 There will be a broad welcome for the additional \u20ac20m funding for disability services, but again this will be seen as playing \u2018catch up\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cSinn F\u00e9in\u2019s alternative budget published in early October would have provided an additional \u20ac31 million for these services, openly acknowledging that even that would not be enough due to years of severe underfunding.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u20ac25m is allocated for free GP care for children under the age of 6, but there is still uncertainty surrounding the so called \u2018nominal\u2019 charge by GPs for this care.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis plan is being promoted as adding an extra \u20ac625 million to the health spend next year, but \u20ac510 million is\u00a0 already part of the 2014 overspend carried forward, so that will leave an additional \u20ac115 million.<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing only too well the HSE\u2019s history the likelihood is that much of this will be used to paper over existing cracks rather than any thought-out patient centred plan<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan also aims to cut spending on patent drugs with a greater emphasis on alternative generics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a general consensus among those interested in health that the spend on agency staff particularly in the nursing area, has to be reduced\u00a0 but it cannot be done in isolation and\u00a0 without also looking at any possible impact this will have on health delivery.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis proposed plan is \u2018not up to scratch,\u2019 appears to have been cobbled together and gives us little new content, unfortunately nothing that would give a person waiting on services any great confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HSE National Service Plan \u2018Not up to Scratch\u2019-Crowe Dublin South West Se\u00e1n Crowe TD described the HSE National Service Plan announced by the HSE as \u2018not up to scratch\u2019 and wholly insufficient for the almost daily crisis facing the health service.\u201d The National Service Plan 2015 for the health services has been published and given […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1978,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1977\/revisions\/1978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}