PEOPLE ARE dying while still on waiting lists to get into hospices while the HSE is using hospice funds to cover deficits in other areas, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health heard yesterday.
Irish Hospice Foundation chief executive Eugene Murray said millions of euro in funding for vital hospice and palliative care staff had “disappeared” into other HSE areas over the past three years.
He said €18 million had been allocated to provide 130 frontline hospice and palliative care staff in 2006/2007. Less than half of these positions had been filled and only one fifth had been filled in the northeast, midlands and southeast.
Some €3 million had been allocated for 47 approved posts in this year’s budget but the posts had not been filled. And only two of a promised eight nursing posts to provide community palliative care to children had been provided. “We were told the other six posts were gone,” Mr Murray said.
Mo Flynn, chief executive of Our Lady’s Hospice in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, said that between late March and early May this year, 94 referrals for palliative care had been made in St James’s Hospital.
Of these, 26 people had since died in the acute section. She said that 8.2 days was the average waiting time for patients requiring hospice care but some waited for up to 20 days.
“For some people, 20 days isn’t the length of their lives,” she said. “Many people are left languishing.”
Irish Cancer Society chief executive John McCormack said the loss of funds was that anger was the only thing he felt on hearing of the litany of lost funds. “It’s simply not acceptable,” he said.
Hugh Kane, HSE local health manager, told the committee that the €3 million allocated for this year would soon be provided. The money that should have been provided to hospice and palliative care services in 2006/2007 “isn’t sitting in a bank account anywhere waiting to be spent. It has been spent,” Mr Kane said.
The committee chairman John Moloney said the committee would be raising the matter with Minister for Health Mary Harney and HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm in the coming weeks.
