The HSE is seeking to begin rostering more staff to work over weekends from the end of June, the organisation’s chief executive Bernard Gloster has said.
He told the Irish Medical Organisation’s (IMO) annual conference in Killarney on Saturday that he wanted up to 10 per cent of the entire workforce “to be rostered in a fair and respectful way at weekends to start to improve the level of routine operation of the health services” outside of the Monday to Friday period.
“So what I am talking about is the totality of the healthcare workforce being better distributed across the seven days of the week. My plan is, by the end of June, to arrive at a point where we will start to see the implementation of a stabilised roster across every weekend.
“And where we have tried it, where we have tested, we’ve certainly seen some of the benefits. It’s not the totality of the need, but it is a big, big part of the response.
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“We see that in the comfort of people who experience trolley waits in emergency departments, but we’ve also seen it in the timeliness of people being able to leave hospital across the seven days rather than condensed into the five days.”
Mr Gloster said the issue of having more staff available at weekends was not just about hospital consultants.
At the IMO conference doctors warned that having more consultants rostered in hospitals on Saturdays and Sunday would mean fewer would be available during the week.
The chairman of the IMO’s consultant committee Prof Matthew Sadlier said that rostering consultants at weekends would involve “deficits of consultant presence from Monday to Friday”.
He said it would result in patients receiving care from multiple medical specialists and being discharged by “unfamiliar consultant teams”. He said it could involve a break in the continuity of care for patients.
Mr Gloster said the workforce had grown by 25 per cent over the last five years and there was “no evidence to say that we’ve got the best use out of everything by having it all condensed between Monday and Friday, and then be dependent on an on-call, valuable, system at the weekend”.
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He said there was absolutely no reason why, for example, a rostered consultant on the public-only contract could not work in a hospital facility on a Saturday, doing routine and normal work as opposed to on call, and have an out-patient clinic supported by a clerical officer, supported by a nurse, supported by an allied health professional as well as having access to diagnostics.
“And there is no reason why people leaving hospital can’t have access to community supports at the weekend,” he said.
Mr Gloster said he had two priorities this year for deployment of staff at weekends. He said the first was patient flow which includes people who might need a GP before they go to hospital, to people who are discharged from a ward.
He said the second priority was “to begin to establish at least the basis and familiarity with having something like an out-patient clinic on a Thursday evening or a Saturday morning which might well suit a lot of families and might well suit a lot of healthcare workers”.
Mr Gloster said the HSE was now ready to present proposals on the changes to trade unions and there would be an intensification of engagement over the coming weeks.
However, he said he wanted to be clear that the HSE was moving in the direction of more weekend rostering and he had set a target of the end of June “to see visible evidence”.
Mr Gloster also said that the HSE was almost ready to submit the business case to the Department of Health on the introduction of electronic patient records in hospitals across the country. He said the department and the Minister for Health would have to consider this before it was brought to Cabinet.
