THE HSE is due to publish a review later this week that is set to end “the indiscriminate arrangements” for transporting dialysis and cancer patients for treatment in the west of Ireland.
The director of operations for HSE West, John Hennessy, has confirmed the carrying-out of the review as it emerged the HSE spend on transporting patients for treatment from Limerick to Donegal is almost 100 per cent over budget for the first five months of this year.
The budget for the service for the entire year is €2.5 million and the HSE’s assistant national director for finance, Liam Minihan, said the service was €920,000 over budget for the first five months where the budget to the end of May was €1 million.
Currently, the service takes 456 dialysis patients and 125 cancer patients in the west for treatment.
The spend of €1.9 million for the first five months has prompted the HSE to review the current service and Mr Hennessy said the review “will be focused and will be targeted on patients who have a genuine transport need as opposed to indiscriminate transport arrangements where everyone who presents will be transferred”.
The budget for patient transport has remained static over the years in the HSE West area. However, the number of patients using the service has increased.
Mr Hennessy said: “The days of indiscriminate patient transport arrangements are in all likelihood over. The measures will be put in place to protect patients who require transport to get treatment.
“There are huge amounts of money being spent on patient transport and there are different eligibility criteria in different parts of the HSE West area,” he said.
“There isn’t any assessment of requirement of need or ability to provide one’s own transport.
“What we have to do is look at options and alternatives and there are alternatives including subsidising voluntary organisations to assist in this or the option of direct provision of support to individual patients who actually do need support,” he said.
Mr Hennessy said the review on the service would be concluded by June 30th.
“We would like the service to be equitable, fair and efficient. Those terms couldn’t apply to the current arrangements in place,” he said.
“Why wasn’t this done before now? is a very good question, but the financial reality we are in now is forcing us to look at every line of expenditure,” Mr Hennessy said.
