It was announced this week that the Outpatients Department at Cork University Hospital (CUH) are changing their appointment system for patients attending the Department. The new system comprises of a timed appointment system only. Not much different to the previous system I hear you say. Previously patients were given an appointment time, however upon presenting [...]
Recommendations from the An Bord Snip report include reducing health expenditure in the form of increasing the drugs payment scheme (DPS) co-payment by 25% and the introduction of a €5 co-payment for general medical services (GMS) patients have come under strong criticism in recent days. The introduction of co-payments or user charges in health care [...]
There is a report in today’s Irish Times of last week’s debate in UCC on co-location.
I was struck by a statistic quoted by Dominic Rushe in the Sunday Times some weeks ago. He quotes a Harvard Medical School report that illness and medical bills caused half of of the jyst under 1.5 million personal bankruptcies in the US in 2001. Given the rise in healthcare costs it is not unreasonable [...]
Jane Bourke & Aileen Murphy Last night, the Irish Times Pfizer Health Debate was introduced with Fintan O’Toole explaining how co-location is publicised as an ideal partnership between government and enterprise. Rather than providing the 3,000 new acute beds required by the health service, co-location is the building of private hospitals on the same site [...]
Brian Turner, of this parish, will participate in a debate on hospital co-location in UCC tomorrow (Wednesday) evening at 6.30. This event is being part-organised by the Irish Times and further details are available here. Brian will be arguing against the motion that ’hospital co-location is neither financially viable nor ethically sound’. The debate, which takes [...]
At the Fine Gael Ardfheis last weekend Enda Kenny indicated that if in government Fine Gael would introduce a health care service based on the Dutch model. This according to Kenny would mean the introduction of universal health insurance for Ireland. The Dutch health care system, to which Kenny refers to, is a single health [...]
Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials recently published results of a study indicating that hospital staff’s mobile phones were tainted with bacteria included MRSA. The study highlighted that such could be a source of hospital acquired infections. This study also identified that just 10% of hospital staff regularly cleaned their phones. These findings however do [...]
The Sunday Tribune recently reported how the HSE, as part of the €1bn cost saving measures, has ruled out substituting branded medicines with generic copies. Such changes are considered “too administratively complex”. Surely, this decision – a decision to reject a pharmaceutical innovation – deserves some debate. Generic drugs, by law, have to have the [...]