THE WAY in which the Irish health service is funded and how that cash is distributed is to be the subject of a new review, it was announced yesterday.
Minister for Health Mary Harney has established an expert group to look at the issues and it will report back by April 2010.
The group, which will be chaired by Prof Frances Ruane, an economist with the ESRI, will look in particular at the system whereby block grants are given to hospitals rather than to specific specialities or departments.
Ms Harney said the goal was to determine how we should be allocating the resources going into the public health system to get best outcomes for patients. More than 11 per cent of national income was now going into the public health service, she said.
She said the group would look at practices in other states but claimed there was no simple way of putting in place a funding system that would be a quick fix for the ills of the health service.
“The method by which we we raise public funds – whether we finance healthcare through taxation or compulsory private or social insurance – is not the starting point,” Ms Harney said.
Any recommendations made by the group will have to be formulated on the basis of the existing amount of public health funding.
The group will include representatives of the Department of Health, the HSE, voluntary hospitals, hospital consultants, primary care, as well as the private sector.
A number of reports have previously looked at issues like financial management in the system but the department said there had never before been such a review of the system of health funding.
Fine Gael and Labour have already suggested a universal insurance system of health funding.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly dismissed the expert group as just another “quango” which he said would only be a buffer between the Minister and her responsibilities.