The "Health Service" screws up again

meathstevie

Folks, after the new breast cancer debacle that has hit the news I can only draw one conclusion :

The head of the HSE and the "Minister for Health and Children" have to be sacked. Not resigning, they have to be drummed out as shamefully as possible. The reasons : gross incompetence and neglect. Blaming a couple of peolpe in some backwater of a country hospital is not going to be good enough. The buck stops somewhere. The only solution I can see is a team of medical professionals appointed on merit to handle this system in freefall and get the priorities right : delivering healthcare. There's been enough waffle and paperpushing at this stage : it's time to start working and solving problems.

If this was Willy O'Dea instead of Mary Harney the equivalent would be sending troops to Darfour without ammo and boots and a rifle between twenty soldiers while claiming everything is grand and fine and when the coffins come back ordering an external consultants report.

jahalpin

meathstevie wrote: »

Folks, after the new breast cancer debacle that has hit the news I can only draw one conclusion :

The head of the HSE and the "Minister for Health and Children" have to be sacked. Not resigning, they have to be drummed out as shamefully as possible. The reasons : gross incompetence and neglect. Blaming a couple of peolpe in some backwater of a country hospital is not going to be good enough. The buck stops somewhere. The only solution I can see is a team of medical professionals appointed on merit to handle this system in freefall and get the priorities right : delivering healthcare. There's been enough waffle and paperpushing at this stage : it's time to start working and solving problems.

If this was Willy O'Dea instead of Mary Harney the equivalent would be sending troops to Darfour without ammo and boots and a rifle between twenty soldiers while claiming everything is grand and fine and when the coffins come back ordering an external consultants report.

What does the whole thing have to do Mary Harney? Three apparently qualified doctors misread x-rays and other tests and gave this women the all-clear when she was obviously sick.

The minister has no power over the hiring and firing of staff and cannot possibly be held responsible for their actions

meathstevie

What has this to do with Mary Harney ? Everything.

This is another story on top of a load of other disaster stories coming out of the HSE.

She is the minister responsable for the working of the healthservice and this service has consistently underperformed or worse. She has not been capable or willing to mend the situation after having had plenty of time to do so.
If this was a single occurance incident I'd agree with you but the trouble in healthcare is a lot more structural than that. Anyone remember the payslip computer that did just about everything except what it was supposed to do ? MRSA, anyone ? Overcrowding, anyone ?

What else can you say than pack your bags and collect your P45 on the way out ?

Mylow

jahalpin wrote: »

What does the whole thing have to do Mary Harney? Three apparently qualified doctors misread x-rays and other tests and gave this women the all-clear when she was obviously sick.

The minister has no power over the hiring and firing of staff and cannot possibly be held responsible for their actions

Well if she has no power get rid of her. Pointless paying her salary if she can do nothing about it.

Guy:Incognito

meathstevie wrote: »

What has this to do with Mary Harney ? Everything.

This is another story on top of a load of other disaster stories coming out of the HSE.

How is it here fault? The x-rays are read by qualified people who know what they are doing, Unfortunately peopl eare fallible and miss things. Apparently people reading x-rays have something like a 5% miss rate. It's not like looking at a page of writing and picking out spelling mistakes.

Larianne

Stekelly wrote: »

How is it here fault? The x-rays are read by qualified people who know what they are doing, Unfortunately peopl eare fallible and miss things. Apparently people reading x-rays have something like a 5% miss rate. It's not like looking at a page of writing and picking out spelling mistakes.

Also, a lot of doctors and other healthcare professionals are overworked which leads to errors. Also, I have heard of doctors taking coke to stay awake through shifts!

Have a read of the doctor who works in Irish hospitals. http://www.twoweeksonatrolley.blogspot.com/

I'd be afraid going into hospitals in Ireland these days.

Guy:Incognito

Larianne wrote: »

I'd be afraid going into hospitals in Ireland these days.

Doctors work huge shifts the world over. It's pretty much par for the course for working in hospitals. We by no means have a monopoly on bad stuff happening.

Larianne

Stekelly wrote: »

Doctors work huge shifts the world over. It's pretty much par for the course for working in hospitals. We by no means have a monopoly on bad stuff happening.

Please have a read of Dr. Jane Does blog. It's very interesting and makes comparisons with New Zealand's healthcare system.

nlgbbbblth

apologies if I'm missing something here but surely the buck should stop with the person(s) who made the mis-diagnosis and failed to the notice the symptoms?

why are we always looking for someone else to take responsibility?

i.e.
Teenager commits a crime. Blame the parents.
Dog attacks child. Blame the owner.

etc.

meathstevie

Again, I'd fully agree if we were talking about a single incident. We're not though. The HSE is is serious structural trouble when it comes to quality and quantity of services provided. For heaven's sake, the place is full of all sort of administrators and they can't even file a single mamogram printout properly.

The person with whom the final responsability rests for the quality and working of this service is the Minister for Health. This Minister has had more than half a decade to make changes and improvements in the healthservice and the only result we see is debacle after debacle with sometimes fatal consequences and good money thrown after bad.

minidazzler

What about all the things that are done right?

When was the last time you heard in the News, Doctor correctly diagnoses rare obscure illness, (which I know they have).

As a nation of complainers of course we want to see the bad in everything but in fairness you can't blame a minister for something she has no control over such as the actual diagnosis. Her job is strictly Admin and while there is a bit of overcrowding it's nothing on Par with our prisons.

tallaght01

I don't think this is a simple issue.

Having said that, i think Harney should be thrown out on her arse as soon as possible. But not just for this.

This makes the news. But people die in Ireland all the time because of the crappy health service. But dying of cancer is always more newsworthy than those who die because they've turned to drugs to cope with their problems, because there was a 2 year waiting list for counselling.

I don't know all the details of this case. But from what's known, I think most doctors would agree this woman would have died, regardless.

Apparently, she previously had breast cancer and was in remission 2 years later. She turned up to hospital with a high temperature. Her chest xray showed a shadow which, in the presence of a high temp, would suggest pneumonia.

It turned out that the shadow was coincidental to the temp (or she may have had the temp because of cancer...that can happen too) and was actually a recurrence of her tumour.

I haven't seen the xray. But....if breast cancer returns and has spread to your chest, then it's spread. Your chances of curing breast cancer that's spread to the chest wall or your lungs is miniscule.

I don't know if the radiologist shoud have ordered a CT of her chest. I have no idea. In America that's definitely what would have happened. But in Ireland, asking for a CT of your chest is like asking them to hand over their first born.

So, I guess I'm sitting on the fence. There may or may not have been medical error. I don't think it will have made a long term difference to the final outcome.

BUt if there was a medical error, they're always made much more commonly when you're snowed under. I suspect that radiologist was absoloutely hammered with work because of crap staffing levels.

Harney should definitely go, regardless!!!

thelordofcheese

meathstevie wrote: »

Folks, after the new breast cancer debacle that has hit the news I can only draw one conclusion :

The head of the HSE and the "Minister for Health and Children" have to be sacked. Not resigning, they have to be drummed out as shamefully as possible. The reasons : gross incompetence and neglect. Blaming a couple of peolpe in some backwater of a country hospital is not going to be good enough. The buck stops somewhere. The only solution I can see is a team of medical professionals appointed on merit to handle this system in freefall and get the priorities right : delivering healthcare. There's been enough waffle and paperpushing at this stage : it's time to start working and solving problems.

If this was Willy O'Dea instead of Mary Harney the equivalent would be sending troops to Darfour without ammo and boots and a rifle between twenty soldiers while claiming everything is grand and fine and when the coffins come back ordering an external consultants report.

Mary harney is an oncologist now?

brianthebard

minidazzler wrote: »

What about all the things that are done right?

When was the last time you heard in the News, Doctor correctly diagnoses rare obscure illness, (which I know they have).

As a nation of complainers of course we want to see the bad in everything but in fairness you can't blame a minister for something she has no control over such as the actual diagnosis. Her job is strictly Admin and while there is a bit of overcrowding it's nothing on Par with our prisons.

Firstly, she should have a proper system in place to triple check all possible cancer patients to ensure there are no mistakes like this.

Secondly, we are bloody well entitled to want a better health service, when you see what Cuba can do on a third world budget it puts our terrible system even more starkly into perspective. The minister has thrown millions upon millions at the problem and hasn't done a damn thing to improve the health service since she came to power.

sam34

i probably wont be popular for saying this, but....
we're never going to get a service where everything is run perfectly and there are no medical errors.
doctors are human, and are therefore not infallible.
Noone is perfect and nobody is right 100% of the time.
everyone makes mistakes. the consequences of the mistakes differ enormously.

if youre a taxi driver and you make a mistake, lets say you take the wrong turn, well, you correct it asap and the worst thats done is a few hundred yards out of teh way and a few cent on the meter.

if youre a radiologist and you make a mistake however, a tumour may not be diagnosed and someone may die. thats tragic, and newsworthy. yet it may not be avoidable.

if teh same doctor keeps making mistakes, then there is likely to be a problem with that doctor, they may be incompetent or negligent.

if lots of doctors make a small no of mistakes each, thats likely to be human error, which unfortunately has awful consequences

ejmaztec

Anybody any idea what Mary Harney does all day?

Whatever she does, the buck stops with her.

Daxie

I fully agree with you Sam

Bob the Builder

You, OP, Speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I say one team of four people per hospital. Sure it would cost like €300,000 per hospital, but by the money saved would trump it.

Then when they were finished there - they could move onto the nursing homes, childcare services, and everything else them incompetent screwups have screwed up.

j1smithy

this thread is ridiculous! Why should Harney be sacked? She shouldn't end of! She is responsible for formulation of health policy not the results of individual cases. Brendan Drumm is responsible for the implementation of said policy. Mistakes happen in every walk of life, however they may have more tragic consequences in healthcare. Personally I think Harney and Drum are doing a decent enough job, given the constraints. The health system is not something that can be changed overnight or even in a year or two. I would imagine their strategy is along the lines of 10 to 15 years, to allow the inefficiencys to retire. Too many vested interests and anyone who forces too much change will bring the whole thing to a grinding halt. Though they might use a difficult recession to fillet the health service more rapidly.

ronbyrne2005

The whole health system edifice is failing but it ain't just Harney's fault. The unions oppose reform, theres too much staff in some areas not enough in others. Theres a lack of clear effective management. Theres too many vested interests set in their ways. Facilities are old etc. When HSE was established the department of health should have been reduced to a few dozen people to supports minister and top medics in developing overall health strategy but theres still hundreds of people doing god knows what in the department of health's offices in town. God knows we spend enough on health system, around 15billion plus all the VHI/Bupa fees etc and our population has a relatively young profile so spend per capita should'nt need to be more than UK, Canada, Germany but it is.

DenMan

Not wanting to put the HSE down here as I have a few friends who work in it (East, North West) but there is something seriously wrong there. Is it down to senior management not explaining in detail to people further down the ladder exactly what is to be done or something else. If it is incompetance then surely the buck stops at the top and not the people who are ill-informed and in some cases held to blame. A few pals of mine said that people were more properly cared for under the older health board system. I am not sure about that one, but there may be some truth to it.

ejmaztec

Perhaps all medical staff should be fitted with "tachometers", so that they can't work longer hours than they're supposed to. If truck drivers' hours can be regulated to prevent death and destruction on the roads, then the same regulation can help to prevent death and destruction in a hospital.

If commercial enterprises are not functioning properly, the CEO gets kicked out at the next AGM, if the other directors don't gang up to oust him in the meantime.

The_Minister

brianthebard wrote: »

Firstly, she should have a proper system in place to triple check all possible cancer patients to ensure there are no mistakes like this.

No system is fool proof, even countries that have triple-checks have mistakes like this. Doctors are human, and are interpreting a blurry, grayscale photo - there will always be mistakes. No-one as Minister for Health could ever promise you no mistakes.

brianthebard wrote: »

Secondly, we are bloody well entitled to want a better health service, when you see what Cuba can do on a third world budget it puts our terrible system even more starkly into perspective.

Cuba did that with guns.
They went in and threatened the various people involved. They went to the doctors, and told them that they were now going to train loads more new doctors, and if they didn't like it, well then, Mr. soldier with the big gun is standing over there.
Harney can't shoot up the IMO if they don't agree with her, she has to negotiate with them. It sucks, but its part of the price of democracy.

brianthebard wrote: »

The minister has thrown millions upon millions at the problem and hasn't done a damn thing to improve the health service since she came to power

:rolleyes: Do you really believe that?
She has:
Brought in the new consultant contract.

Shortened A&E waiting times - they're still long in some hospitals, but in other they've been pretty much abolished - so some progress.

She brough in "home care packages" and now 10,000 people are getting care at home.

Cancer control programmes - Breastcheck and cervical cancer screening.

Centralising hospitals

HPV vaccine - how many politicians would step up and give an STI vaccine to a 12 year old?

Hygiene audits in hospitals - the first in the history of the state (it's shameful that they weren't introduced years ago, but there you go).

National Treatment Purchase Fund - slashed waiting times from years to months.

She made the means test easier so far more people are eligible for medical cards

New Childrens Hospital - This decision has been put off by successive ministers for close to thirty years, because they all knew that wherever it went people would go nuts. She actually made a decision.

She set up the Health Information and Quality Authority to monitor hospital hygiene.

And many more.......:)

Basically, if you look at her record she's done more reform than any other minister for health.

meathstevie wrote: »

Blaming a couple of peolpe in some backwater of a country hospital is not going to be good enough.

Why not, they made the mistake

meathstevie wrote: »

The only solution I can see is a team of medical professionals appointed on merit to handle this system in freefall and get the priorities right : delivering healthcare. There's been enough waffle and paperpushing at this stage : it's time to start working and solving problems.

Harney got in the best experts in the worls to advise her on the Health service. That's where things like the centralisation of hospitals comes from, its international best practice. We already have the best advising us, and thats why we have the consultants contract, centralisation, hygiene audits etc. What other politician would have actually pushed through hospital centralisation, thereby pissing off half the country?
We are already acting on the best advice from international actors.

brianthebard

OK first off, you put my name to someone elses quote. Secondly, wouldn't really expect a PD to rip on Harney, but there you go.

The_Minister

brianthebard wrote: »

OK first off, you put my name to someone elses quote. Secondly, wouldn't really expect a PD to rip on Harney, but there you go.

:rolleyes:Great way to dodge my points.

tallaght01

The_Minister wrote: »

She has:
Brought in the new consultant contract.

Shortened A&E waiting times - they're still long in some hospitals, but in other they've been pretty much abolished - so some progress.

She brough in "home care packages" and now 10,000 people are getting care at home.

Cancer control programmes - Breastcheck and cervical cancer screening.

Centralising hospitals

HPV vaccine - how many politicians would step up and give an STI vaccine to a 12 year old?

Hygiene audits in hospitals - the first in the history of the state (it's shameful that they weren't introduced years ago, but there you go).

National Treatment Purchase Fund - slashed waiting times from years to months.

She made the means test easier so far more people are eligible for medical cards

New Childrens Hospital - This decision has been put off by successive ministers for close to thirty years, because they all knew that wherever it went people would go nuts. She actually made a decision.

She set up the Health Information and Quality Authority to monitor hospital hygiene.

Why not, they made the mistakeHarney got in the best experts in the worls to advise her on the Health service. That's where things like the centralisation of hospitals comes from, its international best practice..

I never believe A+E times. There's minimally more doctors and nurses on the ground. I've been in hospitals where you get transferred to another area outside the A+E, so you're not counted as waiting for a bed anymore. I've seen wheels taken of trolleys, so they become "beds".

The HPV vaccine isn't going to cost anyone an election, and is being rolled out in most developed contries. Because it makes financial sense.

Hygiene audits have been a crock of balls way for the government to blame MRSA on everything, except what all the studies show cause it.....overcrowding.

Sick people shouldn't have to receive substandard care at home. They should have a nurse with them all day in a hospital. Not a nurse popping in in the morning and the evening.

The consultant contract came with an attempted gagging clause!!!!LOL

Plus, guess which consultants aren't included in that contract....guess which consultants earn less than half of what the others earn.....public health consultants. Says it all really.

The number of people eligible for medical cards was increased, after 70,000 low income people lost them under Harneys guidance. She's maybe going to give them back. Good effort. Plus more people will get them over the next year or 2, because of rising unemployment. That's nothing for the govt to slap themselves on the back about. It's just gonna cause a lot more pressure on the health service.

The experts Harney has brought in are the likes of Drumm. A great paediatrician. But she got him out of that role, and put him in a role he's crap at. Eminent clinicians don't always make the best managers.

Hospital centralisatoin is, I agree a good idea. That's about it, though. :P

brianthebard

The_Minister wrote: »

:rolleyes:Great way to dodge my points.

Pfft this is AH I don't need proper counter points. Tallaght's done a much better job than I could anyways.

fly_agaric

The_Minister wrote: »

She set up the Health Information and Quality Authority to monitor hospital hygiene.

It was supposed to be established in tandem with the HSE Afair...and it wasn't. It seems to me to be, kind of important, to have an auditing body keeping an eye when you're hiving off key functions of the state into a far less accountable "quango" like Harney's baby.

The_Minister wrote: »

Basically, if you look at her record she's done more reform than any other minister for health.

She'd done alot alright but most of it has been at best fairly useless when it comes to improving the health service, at worst harmful.
She's definitely moved Ireland towards a much more privatised/corporate system of healthcare - a big change which she has had zero mandate whatsoever for IMO and has been allowed to proceed with solely because of quirks in our system of democracy.