Consultant salaries in Irish Hospitals

Lady Wintour

I can't find the new consultant contracts on the net. Does anyone know what consultants earn in the public sector depending on their contract?

Also, obviously earnings from private practice vary considerably depending on specialty and geography, but any such knowledge would be appreciated.

Dermatology seems to be a very high paying specialty, but any idea of the actual amounts? Surgery is high too. What about other medical specialties, particular surgical specialties, like ophthalmology, psychiatry, pathology, obstetrics/gynaecology, paediatrics?

References are appreciated.

dan_d

Would having a look on publicjobs.ie help?
There's a number of jobs advertised there and they have salaries attached.....probably not definitive info, but it would give you an idea?

Dan_Solo

All the new contracts I've heard of are "star" consultancies with no private hours allowance too.

Lady Wintour

Thanks, the public jobs website is very helpful.

There is allowance for private work but it is indeed very restricted!

Any thoughts on fully private practice?...

lonestargirl

The Department of Health Consolidated Salary Scales contain all HSE salary scales including those for consultants.

The only consultants who get their own categories are psychiatrists, palliative medicine and geriatrics, i.e. there is no specific dermatologist scale it just depends on what type of contract they go for.

sf94117

lonestargirl wrote: »

The Department of Health Consolidated Salary Scales contain all HSE salary scales including those for consultants.

The only consultants who get their own categories are psychiatrists, palliative medicine and geriatrics, i.e. there is no specific dermatologist scale it just depends on what type of contract they go for.

Quite a jump from the highest point on the NCHD scale (about 85K for a senior reg) to the starting salary of a consultant (about 160K)!!!

RATM

My sister is a consultant anesthetist (4 yrs)- she earns about 170k per year from her public hospital work The other two days she is self employed and works in private hospitals- no ideas what she gets here but you can assume its good money.

KindOfIrish

RATM wrote: »

My sister is a consultant anesthetist (4 yrs)- she earns about 170k per year from her public hospital work The other two days she is self employed and works in private hospitals- no ideas what she gets here but you can assume its good money.

I know who's not going to emigrate to UK for sure;)
Here is a UK consultant salary: Threshold 5, years completed as a consultant 4, £83,829, period before eligibility for next threshold five years :eek:

Dan_Solo

Well I guess the Irish government has it there in black and white an exact number that is sufificient to stop the consultant "talent leaving" as the bankers say. Looks like €100,000 is the ballpark figure.
New consultant contracts generally do not allow any private practice though. Clearly the old contracts need to be scrapped immediately, but the HSE has a fine tradition of caving in at the earliest possible opportunity to the consultant union.

WhodahWoodah

RATM wrote: »

My sister is a consultant anesthetist (4 yrs)- she earns about 170k per year from her public hospital work The other two days she is self employed and works in private hospitals- no ideas what she gets here but you can assume its good money.

So are you saying she's getting €170k per annum to work a 3 day week??? That's mental if it's the situation!

Dan_Solo

WhodahWoodah wrote: »

So are you saying she's getting €170k per annum to work a 3 day week??? That's mental if it's the situation!

Well how could they double their salary with private work if they had to do more than three days of public? How cheap do you think yachts and Bentleys are exactly? ;-)
Don't worry, there's only a couple of thousand of them in the country. Can't be costing the state much at 170k+ per year each, can they? And the brilliant health service we get for such a low price...

suitseir

Can someone clarify for me what a consultant cardiologist earns working in say a private clinic in Ireland?

lonestargirl

suitseir wrote: »

Can someone clarify for me what a consultant cardiologist earns working in say a private clinic in Ireland?

As private consultants are self employed there is going ro be huge variability in the amount earned.

Dan_Solo

I guess any new public sector consultants are now on 10% less... there's a start...

gally

Dr.James o Reilly is likely to be the next Minister for Health and bearing in mind his past as a negotiator on behalf of the IMU we,re not likely to get better value anytime soon.!

Lady Wintour

So can anyone actually name some figures of what a consultant would get from PRIVATE practice?

I know it depends on a million things. But any figures for specialties?

Prophet of Doom

An update from the horse's mouth: a significant number of high profile consultants have left Ireland and relocated to USA, Canada, UK and Other European countries. The salaries are impressive on paper. By the time pension contributions, pension levy, universal social charge, income tax and PRSI (national insurance) are deducted, your take home pay is reduced to 45 to 47 % of your gross pay. If you decide to enter the "lucrative" private practice market, you can expect a tax / PRSI/ universal Social Charge bill to eat into your earnings to the tune of 55%. This is also an unregulated cut-throat sector where unless you are one of the boys, you will not be able to feed your dependents. Unless of course you are Houdini and can hide your earnings from the taxman, while paying private school fees and private health insurance. Not forgetting the cost of living is still substantially higher in Ireland than UK, Canada and the US. So a free honest advice: stay put wherever you are.

Dan_Solo

So consultants only get a take home of 2 or 3 grand a week.
My heart bleeds.

Prophet of Doom

Yes roughly around 10,000 euro per month, and thats the poorer consultants pay. Surely thats not much, is it?

Dan_Solo

Delighted they know where the door is then. The pay cuts for new consultants and public service only contracts will show the people of Irelands just how "dedicated" our senior medicial staff are, won't it? :-)

davo10

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Delighted they know where the door is then. The pay cuts for new consultants and public service only contracts will show the people of Irelands just how "dedicated" our senior medicial staff are, won't it? :-)

Or it will show us what longer waiting lists look like as there will be less specialists to see the seriously ill.

If you want them to earn less, fair enough but why would you them blame them for going to work somewhere where they have better working conditions, better prospects for research and clinical development and better remuneration. If your working arrangements were being altered and pay reduced, and you were offered secure work elsewhere on a better wage, would you turn it down?

Prophet of Doom

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Delighted they know where the door is then. The pay cuts for new consultants and public service only contracts will show the people of Irelands just how "dedicated" our senior medicial staff are, won't it? :-)

Unfortunately the new consultants pay cut will not affect existing consultants. What will happen is that there will be no interest in the extra consultant posts needed to break the monopoly the current consultants hold on the health system. In fact it will consolidate their existing positions. All they have to dois decrease their public work load, thereby forcing desperate patients to seek their private services. This is currently widely practised anyway as there are no governance structures to enforce efficient work practice. If I was the minister for health or in control of the HSE, I would terminate all consultants' existing contracts and invite new applications with a defined public job plans only. Then we will realise the real dedication. Wishful thinking.

Prophet of Doom

davo10 wrote: »

Or it will show us what longer waiting lists look like as there will be less specialists to see the seriously ill.

If you want them to earn less, fair enough but why would you them blame them for going to work somewhere where they have better working conditions, better prospects for research and clinical development and better remuneration. If your working arrangements were being altered and pay reduced, and you were offered secure work elsewhere on a better wage, would you turn it down?

Consultants are too comfortable in Ireland. There is a perception that they are indispensable and the health service will collapse without them. Nobody is indispensable. If the health budget and the country is truly in crisis, which I believe it is, there is a need for critical action. Fire them all and rehire with new temporary contracts. this way you will guarantee an efficient and productive service. There is nobody in the country will b---s to stand up to the consultants.
There may be better re-enumeration and working conditions in other countries BUT consultants will certainly work a lot harder and are held accountable with strict work practice. There is none of this in Ireland, You have consultants with strict limitation on private practice in public hospitals who constantly break their private practice ceiling. A lot more who hold contracts prohibiting their practice in private offsite hospitals, constantly ignore and break their contracts by working in private hospitals under the noses of their administrators. As I said before no body is capable of enforcing their contracts. None of this would occur in other countries except the third world. Is Ireland a third world country???

davo10

If you fire them all and offer new contracts you give them an even stronger position, they do not have to accept and by terminating their employment they no longer have responsibility to work for HSE and may be free to negotiate individual contracts as the need for their services would increase exponentially in their absence. If they are not needed, who does the orthopaedic surgeries, who looks after sick children in paediatric units, who do people attend for cancer treatment, who treats mothers with complicated birth?, be careful what you wish for.

Dan_Solo

My my estimation, about 1 in 10 visits to a hospital will you actually see a consultant at all. They hand over their public patients every single time while they look after their own cash cow private patients. Registrars seem to do all the real work.
No, I don't blame them, or anybody else for upping sticks for better conditions/pay elsewhere (though the US is about the only place they'd be paid more). Simple fact is they are overpaid in any Irish economic model, both historically and projected. If this means halving the numbers appointed and relying on registrars then so be it. Looks like that's the set up already anyway.

Dan_Solo

davo10 wrote: »

If you fire them all and offer new contracts you give them an even stronger position, they do not have to accept and by terminating their employment they no longer have responsibility to work for HSE and may be free to negotiate individual contracts as the need for their services would increase exponentially in their absence. If they are not needed, who does the orthopaedic surgeries, who looks after sick children in paediatric units, who do people attend for cancer treatment, who treats mothers with complicated birth?, be careful what you wish for.

The registrars and trainees who currently do most of these procedures more or less unsupervised already? Doctors are far more bothered by losing their "right" to double job with private patients than any cut to their basic salary from what I hear.
I wonder what would happen if a mechanic, graphic designer or Garda told their boss they only wanted to work Monday to Wednesday as they had this other gig on the side the other two days!

davo10

"More or less" there is the issue. Registrars and SHOs may do most of the work but it is under the supervision of the consultants, maybe not bedside but they report what they do or are about to do to their consultant supervisor who advises them and steps in when needed. If one of your kids needs a life threatening procedure, do you want a trainee or the top person performing it?. Remember Registrars need consultant guidance to become consultants, I don't know but I would imagine that all registrars are registrars so they can become consultants.

Dan_Solo

davo10 wrote: »

"More or less" there is the issue. Registrars and SHOs may do most of the work but it is under the supervision of the consultants, maybe not bedside but they report what they do or are about to do to their consultant supervisor who advises them and steps in when needed. If one of your kids needs a life threatening procedure, do you want a trainee or the top person performing it?. Remember Registrars need consultant guidance to become consultants, I don't know but I would imagine that all registrars are registrars so they can become consultants.

And all roadweepers would like to be head of the civil service. So? There's that nauseating sense of entitlement again we hear from medics ever time their salary is brought up: they "deserve" to be consultants. If one of my kids has a "life threatening procedure" (though I prefer if it was a life saving one...), why should the doctor's salary come into it? A registrar with 20 years experience is exactly the same skill level as a consultant with the same experience. Are you saying doctors get better because they are paid more?

davo10

Dan_Solo wrote: »

And all roadweepers would like to be head of the civil service. So? There's that nauseating sense of entitlement again we hear from medics ever time their salary is brought up: they "deserve" to be consultants. If one of my kids has a "life threatening procedure" (though I prefer if it was a life saving one...), why should the doctor's salary come into it? A registrar with 20 years experience is exactly the same skill level as a consultant with the same experience. Are you saying doctors get better because they are paid more?

They don't deserve to be consultants, they train for 20 years to be a consultant, I doubt they think about what they are being paid as they perform the surgery. They don't get better as they get paid more, they get better as they train more and pass the necessary exams. Registrars to not have the same skill levels nor experience as consultants, they cannot be consultants without first having the necessary training and experience. I'm not defending their wages , I really don't care about it, I do care that if their numbers go down, the standard if care may go down and waiting lists go up.