Mary Harney has some Cheek!
The Minister for Health Mary Harney has recently criticized the INO and it’s nurses for "putting at risk" patients with the recent walkouts at some Hospitals and Psychiatric centres. Not since Typhoid Mary has any other Mary been such a risk to the public health.
Seemingly, unable to cope with or comprehend the delicate nature of Public Health Care, she has alienated all involved and feels she can bully her ill-thought-out concepts onto Doctors, Nurses, Administration, and Patients. Confused that the money carelessly thrown into the system has had no effect, she now believes that closing the purse is somehow going to prove a better policy?
In a quick analysis comparing Health care services in the UK and Ireland I came upon these interesting figures for 2006. The UK has a health budget of £96 billion (that’s 9 zeros after the 96) ours is €12 billion. The population the UK is servicing is 60 million with a healthcare staff of 1.3 million, we have 4.6 million people (not all patients mind you) with a staff of 100,000.
Doing the sums for today’s exchange rate of £0.67 to €1.0 I came up with this assesment, any corrections are most welcome!
Ireland spends €3,000 per capita and has one staff member for every 40 people in the population (possible patients). The UK budgets €2,400 per capita and has one staff per 60 possible patients. So we spend more and have more carers at the ready. What’s the problem? We have the financial and human resources to provide equal or better public health care than our neighbour yet we cannot.
According to Mr. Alistair Davie of the UK Department of Health, 80% of the employees are front line staff, with a Nurse to Doctor ratio of 4 to 1. That leaves the remaining 20% of the employees for administration and support staff. Is our Minister of Health, with all the talk of Openness and Transparency, willing to submit any data to quantify the ratios in our HSE as freely as the UK has?
Either we have way too many administrators and not enough hands on practitioners or the vision has been lost at Ministerial level, both of these or some combination of the two are probable.
