Voluntary hospitals

JuliusCaesar

I've been working in the various incarnations of the public health service here for over 20 years, and I've never really understood what a voluntary hospital is, and how they fit in to the health system. I've just understood them to be sort-of like private not-for-profit hospitals, only public.

Can anyone explain?



JC

drzhivago

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

I've been working in the various incarnations of the public health service here for over 20 years, and I've never really understood what a voluntary hospital is, and how they fit in to the health system. I've just understood them to be sort-of like private not-for-profit hospitals, only public.

Can anyone explain?



JC

Sounds easy but

Its a hospital
Employs its own staff
owns its own land
can borrow money

Historically they were religious hospitals set up by various orders who survived on donations from the pubic and money from the orders

Over time the state bought services from the and eventually the money given by the state became the dominant funding for the hospital, in fact over 91% of the money to run these hospitals now comes from the site with small percentage from private insurers for treating private patients, small amounts in donations/bequests and small amount from foundations attached to the orders involved

The staff now are to all intents and purposes HSE employees as the pension is a HSE one

The only difference betwene them and the "public" hospital; owned by the state is governance and ability to take own direction if they have money

FOR EXAMPLE

Rich person dies, donates €5 million to public hospital, than you very much money goes to HSE

Same person dies again (miracles of modern science and medicine) donates to voluntary hospital they keep the cash and develop a new service, put money in a research fund to promote medical advancements, buy a new scanner etc


Realistically HSE/DoHc/Government should buy them out as it would then be able to control the health agenda which it cannot when these hospitals are their own masters.

It would be a brave Minster that said St Elsewhere we have decided not to give you your €100 million grant to provide medical services we are giving more to another hospital instead

If they owned all they would have better chance of reform

JuliusCaesar

Thank you very much DrZ. It's like education then isn't it? The schools are/were owned by Catholic church, CoI etc, teachers paid by Dept Ed; get grants from Dept Ed; but decisions taken by parish priest/vicar (and his board of management).

However, I'll also take it to mean that maybe the voluntary hospitals are in some way more efficient than those run by the black hole of the HSE.

drzhivago

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Thank you very much DrZ. It's like education then isn't it? The schools are/were owned by Catholic church, CoI etc, teachers paid by Dept Ed; get grants from Dept Ed; but decisions taken by parish priest/vicar (and his board of management).

However, I'll also take it to mean that maybe the voluntary hospitals are in some way more efficient than those run by the black hole of the HSE.

Agree wit your first paragraph but disagree with second, strangely its the public non voluntary that seemed more efficient to me

Many of the voluntary are bigger, more layers of staff harder to find out who does what, in the smaller public hospitals and smaller voluntary hospitals it seemed that people took more pride in their work, helped others when it was not their job if they saw someone struggling and just pulled together more to go the extra step to get things done