Mary Harney on Frontline tonight

IrishTonyO

Mary Harney is appearing on The Frontline tonight on RTE1 @ 9.35pm. One of the few times she will be questioned directly, so should be interesting.

paddyland

Pat Kenny is a good journalist and good political interviewer, but he knows where his bread is buttered, and when to pull a punch.

And you can be damned sure that Harney's 'people' have made it clearly known what can be asked and what is out of bounds. This will be one meticulously choreographed interview.

Mary Harney likes a media that do what they're told.

IrishTonyO

paddyland wrote: »

Pat Kenny is a good journalist and good political interviewer, but he knows where his bread is buttered, and when to pull a punch.

And you can be damned sure that Harney's 'people' have made it clearly known what can be asked and what is out of bounds. This will be one meticulously choreographed interview.

Mary Harney likes a media that do what they're told.

If Mary turns out to be too boring Nell McCafferty is on Vincent Browne Later

unit 1

Hooooraaaaayyy:D

Darsad

paddyland wrote: »

Pat Kenny is a good journalist and good political interviewer, but he knows where his bread is buttered, and when to pull a punch.

And you can be damned sure that Harney's 'people' have made it clearly known what can be asked and what is out of bounds. This will be one meticulously choreographed interview.

Mary Harney likes a media that do what they're told.

+ 1 Vincent Browne is the only one to ask the real questions !

DublinWriter

I do miss Q&A, much as I respect Pat Kenny as a serious political interviewer, his current programme is basically a shout-fest.

irishh_bob

i wager not one person will ask whether reducing nurse and doctor wages might result in more money for investing in beds , i wager more than one will speak of two tier and apparthied system

Liam Byrne

No sign of Mary Harney on it as yet.....

IrishTonyO

Looks like she will be on for a few minutes so she can avoid questions as usual!

Liam Byrne

IrishTonyO wrote: »

Looks like she will be on for a few minutes so she can avoid questions as usual!

RTE need to cop themselves on......

.....either she comes on to answer questions, or she fecks off.

It's the format of the programme, and if she doesn't agree then the "Mary Harney refused to come on the programme to answer questions" would be enough of an indication that she prefers giving two-fingers to real people.

Of course, I'm still hoping that Pat has the balls to point this out whenever he introduces her unchallenged, propraganda, PR slot.

DrumSteve

he's basically after giving her a podium to spout those excuses without opposition.

Darsad

Very disappointing

IrishTonyO

A big let down, she doesn't make herself available often she should have been on the whole program. She got away very lightly

nesf

I thought she did ok.

That said, I'd have much prefered a Q&A style show for such a vital topic rather than the rantfest that Kenny's show is.

hallelujajordan

DrumSteve wrote: »

he's basically after giving her a podium to spout those excuses without opposition.

You must have been watching a different show to me . . i saw plenty of opposition. .

I certainly would have preferred if she had been on for longer but I thought she did a good job, listened to the arguments and tried to address them. . . I also thought the guy from the HSE who preceded her also did a good job. .

I do think RTE need to do more to stop the Frontline turning into a weekly screaming match though !

cooperguy

I thought she did ok aswell. She was able to answer questions put to her. There was alot of anger directed at her because people have put up with alot of crap from the health system. Nobody claimed it would be fixed overnight though.

Liam Byrne

cooperguy wrote: »

I thought she did ok aswell. She was able to answer questions put to her. There was alot of anger directed at her because people have put up with alot of crap from the health system. Nobody claimed it would be fixed overnight though.

Since when is 4 years "overnight" ?

Traumadoc

irishh_bob wrote: »

i wager not one person will ask whether reducing nurse and doctor wages might result in more money for investing in beds ,

Or that increasing taxes will do the same?:rolleyes:

cooperguy

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Since when is 4 years "overnight" ?

Since you had to reform a healthcare service that had years of neglect. It costs nearly €15bn to run per year. That should give an idea of the scale of what needs to be reformed. Between unions, facilities and just the plain bad management of 10+ health boards there was and is alot that needs doing.

Im going to assume the statistic Harney quoted was true (because she will be called up on it tomorrow morning if she was stupid enough to just make something up), going from 29th to 15th shows that progress is at least being made

Liam Byrne

cooperguy wrote: »

Since you had to reform a healthcare service that had years of neglect. It costs nearly €15bn to run. That should give an idea of the scale of what needs to be reformed. Between unions, facilities and just the plain bad management of 10+ health boards there was and is alot that needs doing.

Fair comment.

But I wouldn't use the phrase "overnight".

cooperguy wrote: »

Im going to assume the statistic Harney quoted was true (because she will be called up on it tomorrow morning if she was stupid enough to just make something up), going from 29th to 15th shows that progress is at least being made

Statistics can be skewed, or made to match an agenda.

For example "spending more" or "spending less" was a benchmark for health "progress" for years.

There were other statistics quoted on the show where something went from 120 to 233 - may have been people on trolleys; and there's also people travelling for 2 hours in an ambulance over bad roads......neither of those could be viewed as "progress".

cooperguy

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Statistics can be skewed, or made to match an agenda.

For example "spending more" or "spending less" was a benchmark for health "progress" for years.

There were other statistics quoted on the show where something went from 120 to 233 - may have been people on trolleys; and there's also people travelling for 2 hours in an ambulance over bad roads......neither of those could be viewed as "progress".

True, but that specific statistic was quoted from an independant source. What ever about the more specific statistics its probably hard to scew a league table of best performing EU health services.

Because of the amount of rural areas in Ireland there will always be people travelling distances to get to hospitals. We dont have the population to have everybody within easy distance of a hospital. Best practice is to have centres of excellence where you can have high volumes of people. Makes for the safest most efficent systems where less things can be overlooked (due to physician experience). It now seems to be working for the cancer service.

Maybe overnight was the wrong phrasing to use but people were jumping at the oportunity to rubbish Harney within 6 months of her taking the post saying change wasnt happening. People have no patience with these things. I suppose similar things happened when Obama got elected. They expected him to take office and suddenly not have a recession happening!

thebman

I think the show is too much of a shoutfest at times too but allowing the audience to ask questions allows questions that Pat won't/can't ask to be asked.

It appears to me anyway that the section of people for Frontlines audience is a little more diverse than it was for Q&A.

nesf

cooperguy wrote: »

Im going to assume the statistic Harney quoted was true (because she will be called up on it tomorrow morning if she was stupid enough to just make something up), going from 29th to 15th shows that progress is at least being made

It's true. Here's the full details on the site run by the people who do the survey every year: http://www.healthpowerhouse.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=36&Itemid=55

They have the reports from 05 to 09 up on the site and yes Ireland has steadily made progress over the past 5 years. In 06 we were 25th, in 09 we were 13th. The 2005 report wasn't for the full EU so we weren't surveyed that year.

One quote from the 09 report jars horribly with how the Irish media portray things (it's talking about the trend in Ireland's performance in the survey over the past 5 years):

Ireland: The creation of the Health Service Executive was obviously a much-needed reform. Steady upward trend.

BluntGuy

irishh_bob wrote: »

i wager not one person will ask whether reducing nurse and doctor wages might result in more money for investing in beds , i wager more than one will speak of two tier and apparthied system

Wages have already been reduced. They should not be reduced any further until ineffectual and unneeded manager wages are reduced to 0. Harney has done nothing to tackle that problem with her atrocious HSE creation, which is just a massive pile of deadweight management designed to mask everyone from any kind of accountability.

whippet

I thought she did quite well last night considering some of the inarticulate stuff that was thrown at her. Far too much of 'someone must think of the children' crap.

What I got from the show was actually some hope that there is progress being made from the quagmire that is the whole health system in ireland.

With some of the statistics brought up there is a definite improvment, some sort of a vision and a realisation that historically the wrong people had too much influence in strategy and the archaic work practices protected by the unions are holding back much of the progress that is needed.

jmayo

cooperguy wrote: »

...
Im going to assume the statistic Harney quoted was true (because she will be called up on it tomorrow morning if she was stupid enough to just make something up), going from 29th to 15th shows that progress is at least being made

Speaking as someone married to a frontline hospital worker I can say the HSE or whatever the new quangoe is called is now just worried about statistics and performance metrics.
harney trotted out a number last night to show things were improving.
We are up from 29 to 13 in some performance metric or other in Europe.
Patient care is disimproving because the drive is on just to make the numbers fit.

Remember how someone mentioned the reason there were unopened doctors' referral letters in Tallaght was so that the waiting list figures would not be skewed badly.
It is all about massaging the figures.

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Fair comment.

But I wouldn't use the phrase "overnight".

Statistics can be skewed, or made to match an agenda.

For example "spending more" or "spending less" was a benchmark for health "progress" for years.

There were other statistics quoted on the show where something went from 120 to 233 - may have been people on trolleys; and there's also people travelling for 2 hours in an ambulance over bad roads......neither of those could be viewed as "progress".

The drive is on to meet performance metrics which are then used to claim that the system is improving.
All the while the actual care is going the other way.
Notice how the A&E doctor mentioned that last night.

BluntGuy wrote: »

Wages have already been reduced. They should not be reduced any further until ineffectual and unneeded manager wages are reduced to 0. Harney has done nothing to tackle that problem with her atrocious HSE creation, which is just a massive pile of deadweight management designed to mask everyone from any kind of accountability.

How many HSE directors of this that and the other were on last night ?
Any ideas of their salaries ?
As pointed out by someone the whole HSE is over managed and under led.

Look at a couple of major public healthcare decisions which even a kid could see as being geographically and strategically wrong: the siting of national childrens hospital in the heart of north inner city Dublin and siting the main hospital to service north east on the actual east coast at Drogheda.

Liam Byrne

cooperguy wrote: »

True, but that specific statistic was quoted from an independant source. What ever about the more specific statistics its probably hard to scew a league table of best performing EU health services.

Define "best performing", and remember that the EU said for ages that Ireland had the "best performing" economy.

irishh_bob

Traumadoc wrote: »

Or that increasing taxes will do the same?:rolleyes:

didnt liam doran ( nurses union leader ) not want taxes raised so as to restore pay cuts to nurses , i suspect if taxes were further raised so as to increase the number or beds , most of it would end up in nurses back pockets , it has happened before

irishh_bob

cooperguy wrote: »

True, but that specific statistic was quoted from an independant source. What ever about the more specific statistics its probably hard to scew a league table of best performing EU health services.

Because of the amount of rural areas in Ireland there will always be people travelling distances to get to hospitals. We dont have the population to have everybody within easy distance of a hospital. Best practice is to have centres of excellence where you can have high volumes of people. Makes for the safest most efficent systems where less things can be overlooked (due to physician experience). It now seems to be working for the cancer service.

Maybe overnight was the wrong phrasing to use but people were jumping at the oportunity to rubbish Harney within 6 months of her taking the post saying change wasnt happening. People have no patience with these things. I suppose similar things happened when Obama got elected. They expected him to take office and suddenly not have a recession happening!

+1 , thier was a lady in the audience shouting all night about how down grading of clonmel will result in her having to travel an hour to waterford , BIG DEAL , an hour is not far , too many people in this country want hospitals , universities , sports stadiums within spitting distance in every one horse town

irishh_bob

whippet wrote: »

I thought she did quite well last night considering some of the inarticulate stuff that was thrown at her. Far too much of 'someone must think of the children' crap.

What I got from the show was actually some hope that there is progress being made from the quagmire that is the whole health system in ireland.

With some of the statistics brought up there is a definite improvment, some sort of a vision and a realisation that historically the wrong people had too much influence in strategy and the archaic work practices protected by the unions are holding back much of the progress that is needed.

a single audience member pointed to union intransegence but was quickly shouted down

paddyland

Nobody mentioned about the cancer misdiagnosis scandals.

Nobody mentioned about the 58,000 X-rays scandal.

Nobody mentioned about the unopened referral letters scandal.

Nobody mentioned the bloated HSE administration scandal.

Like I say, a heavily choreographed interview. RTE were well warned in advance which punches to pull. Mary Harney actually managed to pull yet another PR stunt out of what should have been a public humiliation.

whippet

paddyland wrote: »

Nobody mentioned the bloated HSE administration scandal.

Like I say, a heavily choreographed interview. RTE were well warned in advance which punches to pull. Mary Harney actually managed to pull yet another PR stunt out of what should have been a public humiliation.

what are you on about ... she answered direct questions from hysterical shouting members of the public thrown at her from the floor .... do you reckon that was choreographed?

Or would you say that regardless of what was said or done last night? a bit like an opposition's speech directly after a budget is announced .. written the night before to cover all angles!!

As for the specific cases above you mention ... these are being dealt with .. or do you just want to keep dragging the problems up over and over again. We all know the isssues at Tallaght, what would the point in discussing them again last night? apart from mud slinging?

paddyland

It was the worst kind of interview, with people shouting all over the place. Very easy in that circumstance for Harney to pick out the voices she wants to answer, while the real burning questions are lost in the melee. Harney is well practiced in this kind of dogfight, look at her, she never flinched. She was in absolute control. There was no 'panel of experts' to put considered, cutting questions to her, the questions she cannot spin a stock answer to.

Harney knows the kind of interview she can handle, and no better than having a braying, over excited mob, who are too wound up in the heat of the moment to ask the very pertinent questions. You have to be up very early in the morning to take on Harney. Cowen would have been smiling wide at her performance, and how she was able to turn what should have been a slaughter into another PR opportunity.

She presides over a scandalous health service, and no amount of smart debating and PR spin can change that fact.

hallelujajordan

jmayo wrote: »

We are up from 29 to 13 in some performance metric or other in Europe.

Some performance metric or other ? ? ?

Did you read the link that Nesf posted ?

It is an independent, unbiased assessment of our health service compared to others all around Europe.

It is an independent and objective assessment of how well we are doing at implementing reform in the Health Service.

It clearly demonstrates that we are improving. . Harney herself recognised that we still have a long way to go but this report is a good strong indication that we are going in the right direction . .

People want reform overnight . . they also want services on their doorstep and if they are in the public sector unions they want bloated salaries and working practices that, in any other sector would make no economic sense. . Our expectations are unrealistic and we are getting lost in the "What about the children !!!" frenzy . . .

irishh_bob wrote:

+1 , thier was a lady in the audience shouting all night about how down grading of clonmel will result in her having to travel an hour to waterford , BIG DEAL , an hour is not far , too many people in this country want hospitals , universities , sports stadiums within spitting distance in every one horse town

+1, Agree 100% . . what is being lost in this is the fact that the same strategy, once fully implemented, that requires her to drive for an hour will save other people's lives.

Dannyboy83

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jmayo

irishh_bob wrote: »

+1 , thier was a lady in the audience shouting all night about how down grading of clonmel will result in her having to travel an hour to waterford , BIG DEAL , an hour is not far , too many people in this country want hospitals , universities , sports stadiums within spitting distance in every one horse town

FFS forum rules compel me not to engage with you as you deserve.
You have some f***ing neck to tell any parent that it is no BIG DEAL to drag their sick child an extra hour to another under staffed ill equipped hospital.

First off do you have kids, because by christ a parent will or should do anything to protect their children ?
Secondly if you knew anything about health care the first hour is often the critical hour in many cases.
It definetly is in trauma accident cases.

BTW how far away from a major hospital do you live, both in distance and time (non rush hour) ?

It is damm easy for some people to come on here and mouth off about others wanting to be close to some form or decent primary emergency health care when they live in f***ing Dublin or in a city or town whcih happens to have those facilities.

hallelujajordan wrote: »

Some performance metric or other ? ? ?

Did you read the link that Nesf posted ?

It is an independent, unbiased assessment of our health service compared to others all around Europe.

It is an independent and objective assessment of how well we are doing at implementing reform in the Health Service.

It clearly demonstrates that we are improving. . Harney herself recognised that we still have a long way to go but this report is a good strong indication that we are going in the right direction . .

People want reform overnight . . they also want services on their doorstep and if they are in the public sector unions they want bloated salaries and working practices that, in any other sector would make no economic sense. . Our expectations are unrealistic and we are getting lost in the "What about the children !!!" frenzy . . .

+1, Agree 100% . . what is being lost in this is the fact that the same strategy, once fully implemented, that requires her to drive for an hour will save other people's lives.

Boll***s.

What strategy ?
Is it the one where local hospitals are loosing everything so that people are shipped 50 or 100 miles down the road to a hospital that hasn't been upgraded or properly funded yet ?

Tell that to people in Cavan Monaghan who have to travel to Drogheda, the place that allowed women be butched by some lunatic doctors in the past.
Facilities in Drogheda have not imrpoved yet people are meant to be shipped there from all over the north east.

I also ask this poster how far do you live from a major hospital ?

Yet another ffer apologising for the cr** services dished out by the organisation created by your former leader and the woman with no party. :mad:

And yes I am angry about this because this is people's lives not some f***ing numbers game.

hallelujajordan

jmayo wrote: »

FFS forum rules compel me not to engage with you as you deserve.
You have some f***ing neck to tell any parent that it is no BIG DEAL to drag their sick child an extra hour to another under staffed ill equipped hospital.

He doesn't have "some f***ing neck" . . he is taking a sensible objective approach to the situation. The populist, emotional rant is all well and good but you cannot divorce economics from healthcare. Every decision in relation to how you place services will have a personal impact on a constituency of people. You have to accept that personal impact and make decisions for the greater good. If the lady from Clonmel has to travel an extra hour to get the services I am not concerned, so long as there is a benefit to a wider constituency of people. There isn't an unlimited pot of money and people need to understand that decisions have to be made in relation to how best to spend that money for the greater good. One of the positive things that Mary Harney has done is to remove that decision making from administrators and put it in the hands of clinicians.

jmayo wrote:

First off do you have kids, because by christ a parent will or should do anything to protect their children ?

Exactly, hence the emotional reactions like the ones we saw on the Frontline last night. The job of the HSE is to consider not just the lady in Clonmel but all the children !

jmayo wrote:

Secondly if you knew anything about health care the first hour is often the critical hour in many cases.
It definetly is in trauma accident cases.

So, by your argument, everyone in Ireland should live within 1 hour of a major trauma centre . . not realistic. Also, the condition the lady was talking about in Clonmel was not an emergent one that required immediate trauma services.

jmayo wrote:

Tell that to people in Cavan Monaghan who have to travel to Drogheda, the place that allowed women be butched by some lunatic doctors in the past.
Facilities in Drogheda have not imrpoved yet people are meant to be shipped there from all over the north east.

Great argument . . . we shouldn't ship people to Drogheda because bad things happened there in the past !
And btw, facilities in Drogheda have improved very significantly over the past number of years and will improve even more once they can negotiate with the unions to move into the new facilities.

jmayo wrote:

I also ask this poster how far do you live from a major hospital ?

Relevance ? I live in Kildare . . about 35 minutes away from the nearest major hospital

jmayo wrote:

And yes I am angry about this because this is people's lives not some f***ing numbers game.

Actually you are quite wrong . . It isn't a game but it is all about numbers . . If we had a major trauma centre with specialised 24x7 diagnostic services, specialised cancer services, pediatric and psychiatric services in every town in Ireland less people would almost certainly die . . but we cannot afford it. So some people will die and the job of the HSE is to create a strategy that uses the resources available to them to best effect to save as many lives as possible.

Their strategy might require an extra hour in the car for some people but if it ultimately saves more lives (As the national cancer strategy is currently doing !!) then it is the right thing to do.

Liam Byrne

hallelujajordan wrote: »

The populist, emotional rant is all well and good

Yet again this phrase appears..... it's only "populist" because most people feel the same way, and it's only "emotional" because people are at their wits end.

hallelujajordan wrote: »

There isn't an unlimited pot of money and people need to understand that decisions have to be made in relation to how best to spend that money for the greater good.

Any chance your beloved FF would tell that to their banker buddies, their golden-handshake appointees and their disgraced former Taoisigh and ministers ? :mad: :mad: :mad:

BluntGuy

hallelujajordan wrote: »

He doesn't have "some f***ing neck" . . he is taking a sensible objective approach to the situation. The populist, emotional rant is all well and good but you cannot divorce economics from healthcare. Every decision in relation to how you place services will have a personal impact on a constituency of people. You have to accept that personal impact and make decisions for the greater good. If the lady from Clonmel has to travel an extra hour to get the services I am not concerned, so long as there is a benefit to a wider constituency of people. There isn't an unlimited pot of money and people need to understand that decisions have to be made in relation to how best to spend that money for the greater good. One of the positive things that Mary Harney has done is to remove that decision making from administrators and put it in the hands of clinicians.

"For the greater good" is not a phrase Harney believes in. Her idealogy revolves around driving people towards private healthcare, which certainly has nothing to do with the greater good, and everything to do with "me me me".

You are right, there isn't an unlimited pot of money. But I think you'll find it isn't hospitals like Clonmel where it is being misspent.

So, by your argument, everyone in Ireland should live within 1 hour of a major trauma centre . . not realistic. Also, the condition the lady was talking about in Clonmel was not an emergent one that required immediate trauma services.

People who already live within 1 hour of a tramua centre should not have an extra hour added on. If it were a swimming pool, university, library etc. anything else we were talking about here, I would be inclined to agree when it comes to economics. But this is people's healthcare we are talking about. 20 billion euro is more than enough for a country this size to run an excellent healthcare system for all of its citizens. But a combination of union reluctance to implement necessary reforms, the HSE and its ludicrous top-heavy management structure and the expense caused by our broken public-private model which has no place in the 21st century is what holds us back. Closing local hospitals solves none of these critical problems.

Actually you are quite wrong . . It isn't a game but it is all about numbers . . If we had a major trauma centre with specialised 24x7 diagnostic services, specialised cancer services, pediatric and psychiatric services in every town in Ireland less people would almost certainly die . . but we cannot afford it. So some people will die and the job of the HSE is to create a strategy that uses the resources available to them to best effect to save as many lives as possible.

Then this is not an improvement in service, but an improvement in cost. The Harney/HSE strategy seems to be that people who are "uneconomically viable" to save will be left die, fair enough if you agree with that point-of-view. But Harney should stop lieing to people and selling this as an improvement in service.

(Effectively) closing down Clonmel hospital and providing no additional resources or capacity at Waterford and Kilkenny is NOT an improvement in service. It saves money, sure, but it doesn't improve the service for 150,000 people living in the Clonmel catchment. It just shoves all of that service demand into already overstretched hospitals, and worsens the service for everyone.

If you want a concrete example of this with figures and facts, I'll give you one. The St.Michael's Psychiatric unit in Clonmel is going to be closing and (according to the Irish Times) transferred to a "new 50 bed unit in Kilkenny". On the surface this doesn't seem so bad. But unfortunately, this is not the case. A frontline staff nurse informed me that the services are actually being moved "to an existing 44 bed unit in Kilkenny that is already fully subscribed". This mirrors overall HSE policy. This is what our mentally-ill patients apparently deserve no better than. More over-crowding and more lies.

hallelujajordan

BluntGuy wrote: »

But a combination of union reluctance to implement necessary reforms, the HSE and its ludicrous top-heavy management structure and the expense caused by our broken public-private model which has no place in the 21st century is what holds us back. Closing local hospitals solves none of these critical problems.

I agree with much of what you are saying here . . Perhaps the HSE is top-heavy but it is less so than the 11 health boards that existed at the beginning of Harneys tenure and reform is coming. The cancer strategy is a good example of where this reform is having a real effect. We also heard last night that the number of hospitals failing to meet targets is down from 14 to 4. Coupled with that we can read an independent European report that remarks on the improvements being made within the health service. Nobody is saying the work is complete but I do think it is important to recognise movement in the right direction. I agree with your comment on the public-private model btw. I believe there should be a single healthcare system that is independent of the wealth of the patient.

BluntGuy wrote:

Then this is not an improvement in service, but an improvement in cost. The Harney/HSE strategy seems to be that people who are "uneconomically viable" to save will be left die, fair enough if you agree with that point-of-view. But Harney should stop lieing to people and selling this as an improvement in service.

I think you are paraphrasing incorrectly. The economic argument is not saying that those who are economically non-viable should be left to die. It is saying use your resources as best you can to save as many as you can . . If we can achieve that (and I accept that we haven't achieved it across the board at this stage) then it will be an improvement in service for all.

hallelujajordan

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Yet again this phrase appears..... it's only "populist" because most people feel the same way, and it's only "emotional" because people are at their wits end.

But they don't feel the same way !!! . . most people don't care about the lady from Clonmel's child and the fact that she has to drive an hour to the hospital and most of us are not at our wits end about the situation in Clonmel (although, by the way, as pointed out by the HSE reps last night there currently is no 'situation' in Clonmel)

. . Unfortunately, all most people care about is their own situation !

The job of the government and the HSE is to park the emotion and the self-centred populist rhetoric and focus on implementing a strategy that will improve services for the greater good.

Traumadoc

hallelujajordan wrote: »

S
+1, Agree 100% . . what is being lost in this is the fact that the same strategy, once fully implemented, that requires her to drive for an hour will save other people's lives.

Recent evidence from reconfiguration in the UK actually shows a 1% increase in mortality for every 10km extra journey.

hallelujajordan

Traumadoc wrote: »

Recent evidence from reconfiguration in the UK actually shows a 1% increase in mortality for every 10km extra journey.

Can you reference ? Would like to understand the context in which such evidence is presented ?

Thanks

nesf

Traumadoc wrote: »

Recent evidence from reconfiguration in the UK actually shows a 1% increase in mortality for every 10km extra journey.

We live in a very low population density country, we're never going to be able to not have people going 50km+ to hospitals.

Traumadoc

hallelujajordan wrote: »

Can you reference ? Would like to understand the context in which such evidence is presented ?

Thanks

http://emj.bmj.com/content/24/9/665.abstract

hallelujajordan

Traumadoc wrote: »

http://emj.bmj.com/content/24/9/665.abstract

Thank you. . I think this misses the point though . . I don't think anyone can argue that the longer you spend in an ambulance following a trauma the more likely you are to die . . Its just common sense. .

The real question is whether or not the lives that are saved / improved as a result of the centralisation of services outweighs the lives that are lost / disimproved as a result of the extended journey times.

Proper application of health economics requires that we look at the bigger picture and not just one factor in isolation.

Liam Byrne

hallelujajordan wrote: »

The job of the government and the HSE is to park the emotion and the self-centred populist rhetoric and focus on implementing a strategy that will improve services for the greater good.

"self-centred populist rhetoric" ? :rolleyes:

And if that's their job, when are they going to start ?

The double-standards in government are astonishing; on the one hand, we have people going on and on about the "boom" and how we all benefitted (even though it has been and gone) and on the other hand we have statements that things can't be changed overnight.

In that "overnight", FF had enough time to inflate a boom, and demolish it.

But when it comes to actually improving life and society, it's going to take much longer.

Traumadoc

hallelujajordan wrote: »

Thank you. . I think this misses the point though . . I don't think anyone can argue that the longer you spend in an ambulance following a trauma the more likely you are to die . . Its just common sense. .

The real question is whether or not the lives that are saved / improved as a result of the centralisation of services outweighs the lives that are lost / disimproved as a result of the extended journey times.

This is a question that needs to be answered before we go ahead with something that may be wrong

hallelujajordan

Traumadoc wrote: »

This is a question that needs to be answered before we go ahead with something that may be wrong

Do you think they just decided to implement their policies without first asking such questions ? Do you think they didn't explore other, more successful healthcare systems and try to design a better solution ? Do you think there is no planning behind the strategy ?

Traumadoc

There is a lot of planning behind the strategy.;)


I think your Billy connolly quote is very apt to this discussion.:D

cooperguy

jmayo wrote: »

FFS forum rules compel me not to engage with you as you deserve.
You have some f***ing neck to tell any parent that it is no BIG DEAL to drag their sick child an extra hour to another under staffed ill equipped hospital.

First off do you have kids, because by christ a parent will or should do anything to protect their children ?
Secondly if you knew anything about health care the first hour is often the critical hour in many cases.
It definetly is in trauma accident cases.

And this strategy is the proven method to help the most children (and adults) survive and get healthy

BTW how far away from a major hospital do you live, both in distance and time (non rush hour) ?

It is damm easy for some people to come on here and mouth off about others wanting to be close to some form or decent primary emergency health care when they live in f***ing Dublin or in a city or town whcih happens to have those facilities.

When you decide where you live this can be something you take into consideration. Again if this is the best thing for the country its the way it should be. Quality of life in the country or better services in the city. Admittedly it is much harder to choose what part of the country to live in these days what with a recession and all but this is a recent phenomenon (and arguably forces people towards the better services in the cities for jobs anyway)

Boll***s.

What strategy ?
Is it the one where local hospitals are loosing everything so that people are shipped 50 or 100 miles down the road to a hospital that hasn't been upgraded or properly funded yet ?

Tell that to people in Cavan Monaghan who have to travel to Drogheda, the place that allowed women be butched by some lunatic doctors in the past.
Facilities in Drogheda have not imrpoved yet people are meant to be shipped there from all over the north east.

The widely accepted strategy of "Centres of Excellence". Progress does not stop today. Nobody suggested that the facilities stop expanding to take on the extra load.

I also ask this poster how far do you live from a major hospital ?

Yet another ffer apologising for the cr** services dished out by the organisation created by your former leader and the woman with no party. :mad:

And yes I am angry about this because this is people's lives not some f***ing numbers game.

You miss the point that it is a numbers game at the end of the day. Higher number successfully diagnosed, successfully treated