A senior executive with a company providing private hospitals in Australia has said she was surprised when she heard the Irish Government was proceeding with the development of private hospitals on the campuses of eight public hospitals at the same time.
Kim Chant, who was attending a conference on private healthcare in Dublin yesterday, said while co-located hospitals had also been built in Australia they had been provided over an extended period of time.
"I was quite surprised when I found out the number, given the size of the population. I guess my concern here is that there are going to be so many beds at the one time whereas ours was a process over 10 years and it was quite a piecemeal process ... the industry was growing up at that time, so it worked. It didn't have the same catastrophic effects as might happen here with 1,000 beds coming on line all at once," she added.
Ms Chant, business development manager with Ramsay Healthcare, also pointed out that one of the co-located hospitals in Australia failed and said caution had to be exercised before the plan was finalised here to ensure the new hospitals would be viable and in areas where there were sufficient numbers of people with health insurance.
Furthermore she said some of the smaller free-standing private hospitals in Australia had closed since the co-located hospitals were established. "There has been a rationalisation of the smaller private hospitals and in the areas where we have done co-locations, they either changed their focus or they shut down."
Jimmy Sheehan, one of the founders of the Blackrock Clinic and more recently the Galway Clinic, told the conference the campuses of Irish public hospitals would be better used for the provision of step-down beds to free up capacity in public hospitals.
And retired consultant cardiologist Maurice Neligan said the plan to co-locate private hospitals at eight public sites should be put off until after the election. The Government had no mandate for it and the public should decide on it at the ballot box. The new hospitals would not work unless a contract was agreed with consultants that would allow them unfettered access to the new private hospitals, he said.
Vincent Sheridan, chief executive of the VHI, questioned what would become of stand-alone private hospitals in the Republic when all the co-located hospitals were built.
He believed there would be an over supply of private hospitals in the future and that tax breaks for stand-alone private hospitals should not continue if the co-located hospitals were going ahead.
Meanwhile Tom Finn, project manager of the co-location project with the HSE, told delegates there were many misconceptions about the plan and he emphasised strict protocols were being put in place for the new co-located hospitals.
They would not have A&E units, would have to accept admissions 24 hours a day 7 days a week, would have to provide facilities for the training of nurses and doctors, would have joint clinical governance arrangements with the public hospitals, would share medical records, and would fully participate in case mix. They would also have to give the HSE a minimum of a 10 per cent discount on services.
He stressed the whole initiative was a public rather than a private one to free up 1,000 private beds in existing public hospitals.
Furthermore he stressed that it would cost the State €1 billion to provide the beds these hospitals would offer and a further €440 million a year to run them.
Minister for Health Mary Harney said the private developers who sign contracts to build the hospitals will be the ones who will carry the risk if they flounder. Contracts for the construction of the hospitals are expected to be awarded to private developers by April 16th.