THE PLANNED voluntary redundancy programme for surplus administrative staff in the Health Service Executive (HSE) will be extended to personnel at hospital and community level, Minister for Health Mary Harney has told the Dáil.
In a reply to a written parliamentary question, the Minister said plans by the HSE to establish single unified organisation structures between a number of hospitals would facilitate introduction of a targeted voluntary early retirement/redundancy scheme.
Ms Harney said she hoped the HSE scheme would, in 2009, represent the start of the voluntary redundancy initiative across the wider public service, which the Minister for Finance signalled in the Budget.
She said she was engaged in ongoing talks on the scheme with HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm and chairman Liam Downey.
It was not for her, she said, to identify who should stay and who should go. Initially, the scheme would concentrate on surplus management and administrative staff. In due course this would be extended to other personnel.
"It will apply to staff at corporate HSE and also to staff at hospital and community level," she said.
Ms Harney said initiatives that resulted in improved efficiencies and reduction of duplication at all levels of the HSE would form part of the health authority's plans to modify its structures, which were announced last summer.
This includes merging the existing hospital and community pillars at national and regional level.
"One such example is a plan to create single unified organisation structures between a number of hospitals. The aim of this model is to ensure that health service delivery is planned and organised on the basis of a single entity, thus optimising the use of resources, streamlining decision making, harvesting the benefits of critical mass and avoiding wasteful duplication.
"It makes sense that if two hospitals are going to operate as a unified entity, then they do not need duplication of payroll, personnel, IT offices and many other backroom services. This will lead to efficiencies of between 10 per cent-20 per cent in administration costs," the Minister told Fine Gael TD Joe Carey in her written answer.
Ms Harney said similar initiatives at community level would also lead to equivalent efficiencies.
"As we continue to bring together services through primary care teams, this provides an opportunity to reduce levels of administration and to facilitate more clinician-to-clinician engagement regarding the care of patients," she said.
Meanwhile, trade unions and the health service executive are to meet again tomorrow to discuss controversial work practice reform plans put forward by management, aimed at saving around €350 million.
Among a number of proposals put forward, health service management is seeking to reduce overtime across all grades by 50 per cent. It also wants to save €50 million by ending special grants, payments and allowances made to non-consultant hospital doctors. The HSE is also seeking greater scope to re-deploy personnel within the organisation.
The HSE's national director of human resources, Seán McGrath, told staff in a memo last week that the organisation had to end work practices that had no place in today's economic climate, and stop paying for things it could not afford.
Unions have put forward alternative measures including ending the subsidy provided to private patients in public hospitals, which could save around €100 million.
