MORE THAN 200 consultants in hospitals across the State have been formally warned they are seeing too many private patients in public hospitals.
Figures from the Health Service Executive (HSE) show 218 consultants have been sent letters in recent months warning them that by treating too many private patients they are in breach of their contracts.
Twenty or more consultants at Dublin’s Tallaght Hospital, Cork University Hospital, Beaumont Hospital, Temple Street and the Rotunda hospital have been sent the letters.
The extent of the warnings so far is contained in a report sent by the HSE to the Department of Health in February, and released by the department to The Irish Timesunder the Freedom of Information Act.
Not all hospitals were able to provide data for the HSE report, which suggests the true figures for the number of consultants sent warning letters could be even higher.
Last November the Dáil Public Accounts Committee was told 85 consultants had been sent warning letters at that stage, but HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm said more would be getting letters.
The new consultant contract, introduced last year, sets limits on the numbers of private patients permitted to be treated by consultants working in public hospitals.
It stipulates that the ratio of public to private patients treated by doctors in public hospitals should range between 70:30 and 80:20 depending on the type of contract held by each doctor. If private-practice rates persist at levels above the official thresholds, there is provision for consultants to face financial penalties.
More than 80 per cent of the State’s 2,350 consultants have signed up to the new contracts.
Meanwhile a separate report drawn up by the HSE reveals compliance in some hospitals with the new contracts deteriorated during 2009.
In its most recent assessment the HSE found that while in some hospitals like Roscommon and Naas all consultants were complying, in others less than half of consultants were doing so.
Its report, dated January 2010 and covering private practice carried out over a three-month period last summer, says in the Mid-Western Regional Hospital, Limerick, just under 19 per cent of consultants were compliant with their official limits for in-patient cases. The figure for day cases was 42 per cent.
In a previous report published last November the compliance rate for in-patients at the hospital was 25.45 per cent.
The report says at Tallaght Hospital one-third of consultants were failing to comply with the contractual ratio for private-practice in-patient admissions, but 57 per cent were compliant with the limits for day-case procedures.
At University College Hospital Galway 45.5 per cent of consultants were compliant with private-practice limits for in-patient admissions.
Compliance levels at the hospital earlier last year were 52.38 per cent.
The HSE’s spokeswoman said the data in the reports it compiled earlier this year has not been validated due to industrial action.