40% of activity in private hospitals to be taken over to HSE

The HSE is proposes to take over up to 40 per cent of activity in private hospitals, potentially for two years, to deal with further surges in Covid-19 cases.

They are planning to give medical and surgical treatments to public patients in a non-Covid environment. While in some cases patients with Covid-19 would be treated in private hospitals.

HSE did not revealed about the number of private hospitals which have agreed to the arrangement.

HSE said that it was having talks with the private sector on a safety- net agreement to activate in case of any rise in Covid-19 cases in future.

It also said it had tendered for private hospitals to provide different services such as provision of in patient treatment and care for time-dependent and urgent care, inpatient scheduled care such as orthopaedics, outpatient services and access to diagnostic services.

Members of the Medical and Dental Consultants Association, which represents specialists in the private sector, expressed their disagreement over the matter.

They have made it clear that private hospitals are currently operating at full capacity and they were dealing with patients with conditions that were equally as complex as those in the public system.

HSE is not planning to take over fully. Instead it is looking for an arrangement which would provide for guaranteed access to 40 per cent of the  in-patient and day-case activity levels and also the services of doctors in the private hospitals.

This would be paid for in an overall fee based on the average cost for similar procedures in the public system based on consumables and staff costs.

The HSE would not have a direct contractual arrangement with consultants. HSE is understood to want provision to send some of its own clinical or other staff to private hospitals to deal with a particular service requirement.

The proposals envisage that where a public patient was treated as a private patient, any income received from a health insurer would be offset against the bill paid by the HSE.

Patients who are liable for statutory public hospital charges would be billed for these by the private hospital. The new agreement would run for 24 months. And it would be reviewed after a year to look at its progress.