The health system in ireland

I always see people complaining about the hse. I actually think the hse is relatively well ran. In some areas, a lot better than the nhs. Do you think the health service in Ireland is good?

Piriz

i have worked in the HSE, in my experience of working in allied health care some departments are over resourced and some are hugely under resourced. Certain posts these days are operated by people on huge salaries as they have been there for ages while a person on half that salary could do the job...likewise specialist posts are not available to people with specialist clinical skills and knowledge and they leave as a result...and all that specialist knowledge leaves with them... there is a hell of a lot of bureaucracy at times. The HSE recruitment strategy and process into allied health care posts is pathetic...people who have trained for years are only eligible to apply to one specific catchment area in the country to be placed on a panel for a post that comes up...people do not get the opportunity to chose what specific clinical setting they want to work in nor are they allocated to clinical settings they are best skilled for... there appears to be very little initiative to change the status quo
furthermore, there is long waiting lists for patients to receive treatments like rehabilitation, often (not always) the treatment they receive is inadequate..

Afroshack

Until I actually moved from Ireland to the UK, I thought our health system was a total shambles. Now in comparison to the NHS, it's not actually all bad. It's not that expensive, you can often see your GP within a day of trying to make an appointment, and in fairness, we have some brilliant and compassionate medical staff in our hospitals. I think the media just love to focus on the nightmare scenarios, rather than remind us of all the lives they save with very little money and resources.

tayto lover

The waiting times at A & E are far too long.
Spent 6 hours there in The Lourdes, Drogheda, the other night when my little grandson broke a finger.

steddyeddy

Overstaffed by incompetent staff in the wrong areas. Massive amounts of money wasted yearly and very few people get fired for incompetence.

Edit: Frontline staff are brilliant

caustic 1

Media in Donegal were asking public not to attend Letterkenny A and E department because it was so overcrowded in the past few days. What were we to do in an actual emergency. I do know there are people who if they bent their knee a certain way would be rushing off to hospital. It sounded in this case though that there just were not the beds to accommodate patients when forwarding them to wards. Staff in these situations are bound to be run ragged and then having to listen to irate patients who are there for hours and hours, a very stressful position for all to be in. I don't know who is to blame though, or if it is just a combination of circumstances that lead to these you would hope one off situations, although seems to be becoming more commonplace these days.

Anita Blow

tayto lover wrote: »

The waiting times at A & E are far too long.
Spent 6 hours there in The Lourdes, Drogheda, the other night when my little grandson broke a finger.

I think that's a common complaint you'll find in any health system though. You'll definitely find similar A&E waiting times in the UK, Australia etc. Even in the US, a family member of mine was left waiting on a trolley over night with a medical emergency far more urgent than a broken finger.
A&E patients are prioritised by the urgency of the injury/condition. A broken finger is the least priority when the department is receiving patients who require more immediate attention.

kneemos

Paying Hospitals per patient seems a much better system than throwing a huge wedge of cash at them at the beginning of the year.

Anita Blow

kneemos wrote: »

Paying Hospitals per patient seems a much better system than throwing a huge wedge of cash at them at the beginning of the year.

That system favours high-turnover for patients but there are many areas which are low-turnover by nature, such as stroke, amputees etc. A system would need to be in place to ensure the hospital gets adequate funding for these patient's also.

Grayson

tayto lover wrote: »

The waiting times at A & E are far too long.
Spent 6 hours there in The Lourdes, Drogheda, the other night when my little grandson broke a finger.

It's not unusual to wait 36 hours in Beaumont.

Besides that, there are big areas that the HSE can improve in. the HIQA report into Savita's death mentioned that a similar incident occurred in Louth about 5 years beforehand. they'd investigated and had made recommendations to stop it happening again. If the HSE had implemented those recommendations, the Savita case might never have happened.

the bureaucracy in the HSE is nuts and it needs to be improved.

I will say that with some exceptions we do have great service. It's just that the areas where it's bad could be improved with better administration and when it fails, it costs lives.

Hotale.com

tayto lover wrote: »

The waiting times at A & E are far too long.
Spent 6 hours there in The Lourdes, Drogheda, the other night when my little grandson broke a finger.

6 hours isn't even that bad.

I broke my arm about 8 years ago and went into A&E at about 2 and we were leaving when it was dark. This was in the middle of June so it must have been 10 o'clock at least...

I thought it was average until i went to another country and was just blown away by what they had and how they do things.

NHS (England) budget: £109billion or £2,056 per person.
HSE budget: €13.4billion or €2,913 person.

So the HSE's budget is greater than the NHS's on a per capita basis despite how much less we get free at the point of use compared to those in Britain. The money must be going somewhere.

Turtwig

tayto lover wrote: »

The waiting times at A & E are far too long.
Spent 6 hours there in The Lourdes, Drogheda, the other night when my little grandson broke a finger.

At the risk of sounding cold, a broken finger isn't an emergency. Even with the overcrowding situation if you have serious emergency the waiting time is very short.

Our health system has flaws and lots of money wastage. But it's not the worst. The US system is riddled with fraud. The French system isn't exactly rural accommodating and the UK is very tight on how treatments are funded meaning some people, especially those experiencing cancer have long long waiting lists. In that regard Ireland is shorter.

That isn't to say our system is better, comparing them isn't easy. I said the US system has many fraud issues, but it's still a very good service.

It's not as black and white as the media like to portray or people like to believe. In fact, I think Irish people think our services and standard of living are worse than they are. Compared to most of Europe and the US we're doing far far better than we give us credit for. Thing is if we don't deal with the issues in a proactive and sensible manner the system will fall apart. There's no doubting cracks have begun to appear.

tayto lover

Deleted User wrote: »

NHS (England) budget: £109billion or £2,056 per person.
HSE budget: €13.4billion or €2,913 person.

So the HSE's budget is greater than the NHS's on a per capita basis despite how much less we get free at the point of use compared to those in Britain. The money must be going somewhere.

Administration i'd say. Certainly not on the brilliant frontline staff.

tayto lover

Turtwig wrote: »

At the risk of sounding cold, a broken finger isn't an emergency. Even with the overcrowding situation if you have serious emergency the waiting time is very short.

Our health system has flaws and lots of money wastage. But it's not the worst. The US system is riddled with fraud. The French system isn't exactly rural accommodating and the UK is very tight on how treatments are funded meaning some people, especially those experiencing cancer have long long waiting lists. In that regard Ireland is shorter.

That isn't to say our system is better, comparing them isn't easy. I said the US system has many fraud issues, but it's still a very good service.

It's not as black and white as the media like to portray or people like to believe. In fact, I think Irish people think our services and standard of living are worse than they are. Compared to most of Europe and the US we're doing far far better than we give us credit for. Thing is if we don't deal with the issues in a proactive and sensible manner the system will fall apart. There's no doubting cracks have begun to appear.

It was to a sobbing 9 year old. He was referred by his GP.
As it turned out they found a more serious and urgent problem which was good.