Health Minister Leo Varadkar
Paul Cullen, in the Irish Times, reports:
“Hospital waiting lists continued to rise in September despite tens of millions of euro pumped into the health system by Minister for Health Leo Varadkar to reduce delays.”
“The number of people waiting more than 18 months for inpatient or daycase treatment has soared 11,710 per cent since a low recorded by the HSE in late June, while long waiters on outpatient lists are up 563 per cent, new figures show.”
“…Waiting list numbers were cut at the end of June through an outsourcing initiative which saw over 20,000 patients given appointments with private doctors. This allowed [Health Minister Leo] Varadkar to claim a 96 per cent-plus success rate in cutting long waiting lists.”
“However, patients’ names were taken off the list where they had received an appointment, even if they hadn’t yet seen a doctor. Many chose not to opt for private treatment and their names are back on the public list.”
Inpatient, daycase waiting lists soar 11,710 per cent (Irish Times)
Rollingnews.ie
department of health fudge the numbers? surely not. that’s never ever happened.
When the government acts on something these days, it is simply to relieve any pressure that is on the govenment itself because of an issue, & not to fix the actual issue itself. Make the figures look better in the short term, and then fire cooked figures around in response to criticism.
Sounds about right
looking good Leo you’re a shoe in for the leaders job – all talk and no meaningful results to show for it. Looking good too for a november election too – nurses strike looming, massive trolley waiting lists going into the winter bug months that further pressurise departments. add that to impending rail and bus strikes, garda recruits speaking out about poor pay while crime is on the up. Housing shortages, Rent prices spiraling out of control, increase in child poverty and homelessness.
but hey 40 million invested in sports and 100quid from Irish Water thats enough to distract everyone at the moment right?… right?
Its safe to say anyone voting for FG is an example of pure me fein-ism at its best, all snuggled up warm in their well to do tidy town bubbles of ignorance and selective christian values.
spot on.
Hi Paul, how would you / AAA / PbP fix the health service??
Hi Steve, so I’m lumped in with AAAPBP now because I think Varadkar (and FG) have been ineffectual at doing what they said they were going to do in healthcare? I think you’ll find there are more on the opposition bench that just that newly combined party that share that view.
You know what neither myself or Leo mentioned? fixing healthcare. You cant ‘fix’ our healthcare system. I do believe you can make incremental systematic change to divert more of the funds you do have towards tackling some frontline issues. But thats not headline grabbing enough for Leo or FG, not big thinking enough, doesnt jump off the page in election literature. So Leo decides to talk up massive projects like universal healthcare, that became universal health insurance thats on its way to fizzling into nothing because of lack of funding. He could have saved us all the wasted time and consultancy costs if he just took a look how problematic it was for Obama. But then Leo moves swiftly on to launching another massive project – waiting lists and people on trolleys.
Before healthcare was even a twinkle in Leos ambitious eye, there have been nurses and doctors organisations saying that overcrowding, understaffing and lack of available beds is a grave concern, people will die because of this. We all know as ‘auserity’ bit in hospitals and beds were closed, more people stopped paying health insurance and fell back onto the public health system and there has been an ongoing staff hiring moratorium throughout the HSE . So faced with all this knowledge what do you imagine your or anyone elses first step would be in addressing waiting lists?
Yes! Close more hospital beds, force people back into taking private health insurance, watch your party divert billions of funding towards setting up an ineffectual national water utility and then when your grand ideas cant get the go ahead because Noonan wont spot you the cash you threaten medical staff and management with sackings and fines if they dont try and make lemonade out of rotten lemon peel.
The sad thing is Leo is a GP, he would be accutely aware of the needs of his peers struggling in frontline services so he should have a better professional understanding of how to address a malfuntioning healthcare system than you or I.
Your comment is far too long – who the hell do you think has time to read all that?
anyone waiting to be seen in our hospitals.
Bazinga!
Very good answer Paul
“The sad thing is Leo is a GP, he would be accutely aware of the needs of his peers struggling in frontline services so he should have a better professional understanding of how to address a malfuntioning healthcare system than you or I.”
Because he’s a Dr, a “GP”, he should have administrative expertise…… Okey dokey.
The logic train is on the other platform… and it’s left already.
Its safe to say anyone voting for FF is an example of pure me fein-ism at its best, all snuggled up warm in their well to do tidy town bubbles of ignorance and selective christian values.
Its safe to say anyone voting for L is an example of pure me fein-ism at its best, all snuggled up warm in their well to do tidy town bubbles of ignorance and selective christian values.
Its safe to say anyone voting for SF is an example of pure me fein-ism at its best, all snuggled up warm in their well to do tidy town bubbles of ignorance and selective christian values.
Its safe to say anyone voting for [insert party of choice] is an example of pure me fein-ism at its best, all snuggled up warm in their well to do tidy town bubbles of ignorance and selective christian values.
Did you have a point?
it’s fair to say that anyone posting that sort of response on the internet is inherently at the intellectual level of an endangered albino giant special needs panda who has trouble mating, let alone conceiving
Oh you!
You, you… you special needs pandaist !
I shoulda put the Greens in there too :)
Like the Greens, and the Panda, I’d say you have trouble forcing out a shite at the best of times let alone a brand new Panda
Hungover today Clampers?
If you read above the paragraph you expertly copied and pasted you can see there is a point to my post. In a nutshell if you are sold on voting back in a party that didnt deliver anything concrete but penury for the increasingly less well off, a party that somehow managed to take the crapheap that FF left behind and make it into an even bigger cesspool then yes you are a Me Feiner of the highest order. You are proactively saying that you’ve seen what FG can provide, you did alright out of it and you want more of the same please. Sure politics is built on a strategy of looking after your own hide right across the political spectrum, but voting shouldnt be, you owe it to society to think beyond your own doorstep.
I do and did think beyong my own doorstep and my wallet when I repeatedly voted against FF.
FF have done far more damage to this country than one stint in government by FG/L, in the middle of the worst recession ever.
I’m more concerned with the idea that people may think of voting back in the most corrupt of all the parties again, FF.
I don’t drink :)
Maybe it’s time to start.
Believe me no-one will be able to tell either way.
Irish Governmental Lesson 01: Inherit a shed load of criminally mismanaged problems from previous governments. 02. PR and spin with your ‘Media Partners’ all the way to the next election while not materially improving the lives of anyone in the State.
Lesson over.
Currently waiting 28 months. The only contact so far has been 3 letters seeing if I got miraculously healed and no longer needed the appointment. There’s no private equivalent at the mo so am stuck on this merry go round. So nice to see the HSE putting their energy and our money into number fudging. Methinks maybe they hope me and several thousand of my fellow waiters will die off.
you’re not dead yet are you? stop whining you little ninny
Please tell me that was a joke and you’re not that much of an a$$h@le, Ban. 28 months on a waiting list can lead to a simple problem becoming a far more complex one. Aside from the undoubted stress on the patient, it’ll increase the cost to the HSE.
I realise I had my glasses on the humourless setting. My apologies, Ban.
Presumably you’re in a waiting list for that opticians appointment too so hey no problem
Sadly FK while I was being sarcastic I do not see it as a source of humour
I’d hate to several thousand waiters die off: who’d serve me my ortolan during a lock-in at Guilbaud’s? Lame wordplay aside, Gorugeen, that’s an unacceptable amount of time to be on list. I have ashes in my gob saying this but SF reps are very good at barraging the HSE with clarification requests.
I can’t stand him and all the little dopes that buzz around him when he floats into Myos in Castleknock for a pint.
This lad is lost. He actually started out in the role poorly with a short term plan of 3 years to rectify massive problems that would take far far longer to fix. That 3 yrs is passed and now another short term plan is developed.
We, as a nation, need to stop promoting unintelligent people in roles they are not fit for.
ah yeah but he’s gay so what’s your point?
Indeed, I suspect a lot of his support has nothing to do with his abilities.