New offer tabled for consultants

tallaght01

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mheyeyeyojgb/

breakingnews wrote:

Hospital consultants are reportedly being offered salaries of up to €235,000 per year if they agree to new contracts being sought by the HSE.

Reports this morning say the latest offer represents the top of the proposed salary scale under the new contracts and would apply to doctors who work exclusively in public hospitals.

Lower salaries of €205,000 and €170,000 would apply to consultants who want to continue carrying out private work.

The deadline for the latest round of negotiations is due to expire in the coming days and the Government is expected to unilaterally introduce the new contracts for future employees if agreement is not reached by then.

What do you guys reckon? The government are asking consultants to give up private practise for potentially an extra 30k per year? Do you guys think they'll accept it? Presumably private can be worth a LOT more than that.

Is this counter productive? I wonder if the only docs who would accept this deal are the ones who didn't have much of a private practise anyway. Whereas those with significant private commitments are likey to take the lower salary, but continue with their private work.

As a potential public health consultant with no real option for private work, I'd happily tell them I'll take 235k, with na greement not to do any private work lol

seriously, though, are the HSE making the mistake of trying to lure docs back from private practise with money, when they simply can't compete. Would it not be better to offer them improved term, like better holidays, better pensions etc?

Any thoughts?

DrIndy

The fact that is missed by almost everyone watching this debate is that consultants are not trying to negotiate a higher salary and maintain private practise - instead the consultants on the old system are trying to negotiate a contract that they can happily switch over to and eliminate private practise along the way.

Consultants see all the problems of the health service too and know they are part of it.

Dr Galen

more or less agreed. they are basically trying to create a choice for themselves and the new consultants coming behind them.

I know money like this seems exhorbitant to normal workers like most of us, but the fact of the matter is that this is what they consultants earn. If we want to avoid a situation where the best consultants shun the public service, in favour of the growing amount of private hospitals then we'll have to pay the money.

now........if they could only sort us lot out with a few euro we'd all be happy

tallaght01

yea what's happening with the nurses?

Just reading that they've been denied a pay rise. But I saw a circular from Liam doran saying that some grades were getting a 10% pay rise on the INO website.

Also rumblings of another strike.....any insider info Nurse_Baz?

Dr Galen

yeah some the higher grades, mangerial ones are getting a raise.

the people on the ground tho are getting nothing. Having read the Benchamrking report i'm not sure how to feel.
Either let down by the union or angry that we're still gettin nothing

grrrrrrr

at the minute all the INO and PNA memebers are giving teir feedback so be a week or two til we know whats going on really

tallaght01

I have pretty limited knowledge of the subject.

But it seems to me that Harney shafted the nurses by implying that they would get a settlement if they went through the benchmarking process, and called off industrial action.

So now that it's happened she doesn't have to pay you guys anything extra, and it would be difficult to muster up the momentum for a strike again.

She may be a crap minister for health, but she's a cute hoor, as they say.

Again, I don't know what kind of wages the nurses in Ireland are on. But I reckon, if they're bad enough conditions to invoke some kind of public sympathy, then you guys should go on strike.

Surely they can only take the piss with healthcare professionals for so long before some group walks out?

Dr Galen

yep you have it pretty much in a nutshell there man.

Seemingly the unions have gone back to the Labour Court. Initially when all the claims were brought there they said that Benchamrking was the only gig that could solve things. Then benchmarking said that quite a bit of what we were asking for was outside of thier terms of reference, now the plan is back to the Labour Court and plead that seeing as no one else seems to want to know, THEY are the only gig that can solve things now.

Seems like a good plan on paper, exhaust all the possibilities that government and industrial relations procedures can come up with. Play them at their own game as such, but you hit the other nail on the head there, the troops on the ground get weary of this kind of thing. They don't give a rats ass about procedure etc they just want to see a few extra euro in their pocket.

Nurses in Finland I think it was a few years back managed to get a massive pay rise in the region of 20%.....how??

They ALL, threatened to and were about to, en masse, resign from the public health system. Government caved and they negotiated. Same thing happened in New South Wales years ago too, pretty much every nurse said they were going on total strike......I think they reached the front door of the hospitals before they got called back in and told the government had agreed to decent talks.

I'd not advocate such drastic measures at this stage for sure. I also think, nurses in general need to drop about 10 of the claims that they initially went looking for. Focus on 1 or 2, do what we can and leave the others for another day, see how things plan out.

Traumadoc

Have to say the new contract does not interest me even though it would be a 60k jump in pay, I do not do private practice.
The main reason why I will not sign is that the managers hate the consultants, and they will screw us the first chance they get. I could end up doing every saturday night or working in another hospital alltogether. For me its about control

I do know a lot of my collegues close to retirement will sign as the pension is based on your salery so they get a bigger pension.

On the nurses issue , you need to look at ESB workers , They strike they do not care how this affect s people, They get great pay. Perhaps Nurses need to be more rutless

tallaght01

So, it looks as though they've come close to a settlement on the consultants's contracts, though I thik it still has to be put to members.

http://www.irishhealth.com/index.html?src=ez&link=OTU0MTk%3D%0A&level=4&id=12957

irishhealth.com wrote:

New consultant deal confirmed

[Posted: Fri 25/01/2008 by Niall Hunter, Editor]

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has confirmed that it has agreed in principle with health employers a deal on a new consultant contract.

The Minister for Health and the HSE have claimed the new deal will in time transform the hospital service and result in major improvements for patients.

IHCA Secretary General Finbarr Fitzpatrick told irishhealth.com this morning that agreement had been made in principle but stressed that it would now have to go through a consultation process with members and with its national council, which meets in mid-February.

There will be three types of contract; Type A with salaries of up fo €240,000, who would work exclusively in public hospitals; Type B with salaries of up to €220,000 who would work in public hospitals but have limited private practice on-site; and Type C, with salaries of €175,000, a limited number of whom will be appointed and who can carry out private practice off the main hospital site.

The contract will also provide for a 37-hour consultant working week, an increase of four hours, for consultants, who will have to work later into the evenings and at weekends, and will work in teams.

Importantly, there will be equal access to public and private patients for outpatient and diagnostic treatment in public hospitals from now on.

Health Minister Mary Harney said this access will in future be on the basis of medical need and not ability to pay.

Health Minister Mary Harney's announcement at a hastily convened press conference last night that a consultant contract deal had been done was initially deemed premature by consultants, but it emerged this morning that to all intents and purposes the heads of agreement on a deal were now in place.

The other consultant organisation, the IMO, however, has yet to reach agreement with employers, having withdrawn and then announced its return to the talks during the marathon sessions over the past week.

The IMO is understood to be having consultations with the talks chairman, Senior Counsel Mark Connaughton. However, as far as the employers are concerned, the talks are now more or less completed.

The Health Minister told RTE's Morning Ireland this morning that her Department and the HSE now had agreement with the IHCA. She said she accepted that there had to be consultation with members of the IHCA but she was confident that they would see that many of the concerns raised by consultants in the talks process had now been dealt with.


She said she now hoped that the IMO, which is not yet a party to the agreement, would also accept the terms offered. While consultants already in post are not obliged to accept the new agreement, the Minister stressed that employers had always set out to reach agreement with as many of the existing cohort of consultants as possible.

The Minister said it is anticipated that over the next three months existing consultants will opt for one of the new contracts and the recruitment of new consultant posts (which will automatically come under the terms of the new contract agreement) could now begin.

It is planned to create up to 2,000 new consultant posts in the coming years, with junior doctor posts expected to be reduced by 50%.

Mr Fitzpatrick said that while a deal was now more or less in place, a good deal of work still had to be done, and while there was a general agreement, the contracts of a small number of specific groups of consultants, such as maternity hospital masters, still had to be dealt with.

He said under the deal, consultant private practice ratios will be managed through new provisions for the appointment of consultant clinical directors and the drawing up of consultant practice plans.

Mr Fitzpatrick said that while consultants who now have private practice off their main public hospital site will be allowed retain this if they move over to the new contract with new terms and conditions, the new 'Type C' contract would also allow new appointments to have off-site private practice.

However, the HSE has said that these posts will only be filled in 'exceptional situations'.

A document outlining heads of agreement for a new contract is to be drafted this weekend.

Anyone any thoughts?

I'm a bit confused by the following statements:

irishhealth.com wrote:

"The contract will also provide for a 37-hour consultant working week, an increase of four hours, for consultants, who will have to work later into the evenings and at weekends, and will work in teams."

I know it sounds obvious, but what does this mean? Is it the end of, for example, surgeons being in charge of the patient they've operated on? Not sure if that's a good thing? Not sure if the other surgeons will be happy enough to share care.
I know in neonates/general paeds we tend to just have patients who are inpatients of the department, as opposed to inpatients of a particular consultant.

irishhealth.com wrote:

"Importantly, there will be equal access to public and private patients for outpatient and diagnostic treatment in public hospitals from now on."

As far as I can see it, consultants aren't the rate limiting factor when it comes to diagnostics?

irishhealth.com wrote:

"It is planned to create up to 2,000 new consultant posts in the coming years, with junior doctor posts expected to be reduced by 50%."

Are they planning to make 2,000 junior docs into consultants?

irishhealth.com wrote:

'Type C' contract would also allow new appointments to have off-site private practice.

However, the HSE has said that these posts will only be filled in 'exceptional situations'

So, who's going to staff clinics in these new private hospitals that are popping up everywhere?

Robbiethe3rd

How exactly can they justify the decrease the reduction in junior doctor places having in the past few years started massively increasing the number of medical school places. As a medical student that worries me.

Further more what now happens about building private hospitals next to the public ones, this seems a bit contradictory to that plan too: what with consultants forced to work in one and not the other, there seems no reason to do that now.

tallaght01

Robbie, I've said it before a few times, but I could be wrong. I don't see how they'll be able to cope with reduced numbers of junior docs when the working time directive is introduced in Ireland.

I've not worked in Ireland for a long time, so i'm not sure if they have some kind of plan to cope . But I doubt it

Chunky Monkey

It is planned to create up to 2,000 new consultant posts in the coming years, with junior doctor posts expected to be reduced by 50%.

Why does the Irish government insist on reinventing the wheel instead of learning from the mistakes of other more developed countries.