{"id":614,"date":"2013-03-01T12:36:33","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T12:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/crowe-calls-on-government-to-act-on-neurological-care-crisis\/"},"modified":"2013-03-01T12:36:33","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T12:36:33","slug":"crowe-calls-on-government-to-act-on-neurological-care-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/crowe-calls-on-government-to-act-on-neurological-care-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowe calls on government to act on neurological care crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crowe calls on government to act on neurological care crisis <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, attended a briefing by the Neurological Alliance of Ireland (NAI) in Leinster House.<\/span><\/p>\n

The NAI, who are an umbrella body representing over thirty not-for-profit organisations working with people with neurological conditions and their families, held the briefing to inform TDs and Senators about the state of Ireland\u2019s neurological care services ahead of their European Brain Month in May 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n

Deputy Crowe said:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would to thank the Neurological Alliance of Ireland (NAI) for coming in to brief Oireachtas members and commend them on the great work they do.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt the moment Ireland is facing a neurological care service crisis. 38% of patients, more than 5,580 people are waiting more than a year to see a neurologist in a public hospital outpatient\u2019s clinic. Even more disturbing is that over 1,000 patients are waiting more than 4 years for a hospital outpatient\u2019s appointment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe government need to urgently invest in our public neurological services. Currently this state has 7 rehabilitation consultants which is dangerously low. If there were 50 we would still have the second lowest per capita rate in Europe. Even if we had 150 neurological consultants, we would have a lower per person amount than many other European countries, such as the Czech Republic, Serbia, Estonia, Latvia and Croatia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe government published a neurorehabiliation policy 14 months ago, which focused on cost free service improvements, but there has been no major progress on this issue.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact all we have even seen is more cut backs in this area. There has been a drop of over 15% in HSE funded net expenditure to disability organisations up to the start of 2013. This disproportionately affects people with a neurological condition, because these non-profit organisations provide the only source of specialist community based care and rehabilitation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 70,000 people with neurological condition in this state and there is growing demand for general neurological and rehabilitation services. The government\u2019s failure to put these services in place is placing people\u2019s health and lives at risk. Investing in neurological services would not only improve people\u2019s health, but it would also save the government money in the long run.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am calling on the government to implement a plan for the National Rehabilitation Strategy to address the crisis in our neurorehabilitation services and ensure that spending is directed to where it is most needed and effect. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am also calling on the government to defend and support the role of not-for-profit organisations who essential services to people with neurological conditions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crowe calls on government to act on neurological care crisis Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, attended a briefing by the Neurological Alliance of Ireland (NAI) in Leinster House. The NAI, who are an umbrella body representing over thirty not-for-profit organisations working with people with neurological conditions and their families, held the briefing to inform […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","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=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}