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Hospital consultants and their pay deal

realitykeeper

I hear hospital consultants negotiated a pay deal which included back pay. They also seemed to take issue with being "spied" upon to make sure they were not double jobbing.

Ah yes, political cowardice at it`s most extreme. Rather than demanding the hospital consultants surrender their passports at the nearest Garda station and have them make an immediate and full declaration of all their assets to the revenue, the government caved in. Those consultants should have been sued by the state for breech of contract. There is already ample evidence that the hospital consultants have worked in private practice while on the taxpayers payroll and the never ending waiting lists are a testament in themselves. Even the waiting lists are the tip of the iceberg because so so many who should have been treated, died waiting for a begrudging consultant whose only interest was to get back to his private patients as quickly as possible.

Mind you, I am all in favor of private healthcare but consultants must work for one or the other. It is clear these consultants cannot be trusted and they need a boss with the power to sack them to follow them around and to shout at them for slacking off. Consultants should only be paid for what they do and not by the hour.

Finally, hospital spending (like government spending) should stop and every demand for payment scrutinized for value in order to end waste. If a hospital overspends, the claimants should only be allowed claim from the individuals responsible and their personal estate. Am I wrong?

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Hande hoche!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlWvk5CUD5w

kneemos

Consultants are allowed work publicly and privately.

What you want is a Soviet style set up. What they do outside their allotted public hours is their own business.

[Deleted User]

The state made a contract. Then broke their side of it.

The consultants took them to court and the state settled.

But I know its popular to kick the consultants because (a) they are very well paid (b) they are small enough in number to provide an easily kickable group without political blowback.

The government can fight them but lets face it these folks have about 10 years of specialised expensive training, huge responsibility in a lot of cases, and many could walk out tomorrow and work anywhere in the world.

And we are short of them already.

Paulzx

realitykeeper wrote: »

Those consultants should have been sued by the state for breech of contract.

Ehhhhhhh.........the consultants sued the state for breach of contract and won.

Why would the state sue them for breach of contract when they've already lost the case.

I'm guessing you're not a member of Mensa

super_furry

Some amount of nonsense being spouted on this. As has been stated they signed a contract and asked for the terms of that contract to be fulfilled. Not wrong with that whatsoever.

eric hoone

It must be the end of the 200k public pay cap policy anyway.

Paulzx

realitykeeper wrote: »

Finally, hospital spending (like government spending) should stop

You want the state to shut up shop and turn off the lights??????

Mikenesson

Paulzx wrote: »

You want the state to shut up shop and turn off the lights??????

It would be a start

The health service budget is mainly serving the employees and unions not the patients

RDM_83 again

kneemos wrote: »

Consultants are allowed work publicly and privately.

What you want is a Soviet style set up. What they do outside their allotted public hours is their own business.

Don't a lot of contracts have clauses against you taking up a second role, particularly if it can be argued that it impacts your primary one?

Corruptedmorals

Stop hospital spending? If you wanted to be dramatic about it, firing or severely reducing pay for HSE non-hospital administration staff would have been a better start.

Many hospitals are not fit for purpose. You could visit Crumlin hospital's main outpatients department or its older but still functioning wards for an example of this but there are plenty. Nationwide a lot of outpatients, A&E's and wards were built for much lower capacity than they are currently dealing with. And they don't have the theatres to take on more patients or shorten the inpatient waiting lists. Hospitals do not have enough front line doctors, nurses or administration staff.

All of our hospitals are struggling with understaffing, poor, outdated facilities and the waiting lists. If spending could be diverted from the office HSE staff and poured directly into the hospitals it would be great. Not stop spending altogether and make them beg when they're already on their knees.

Pugzilla

They deserve to be paid well considering the length and complexity of training, long hours, pressure, liability they have.
All the major decisions regarding diagnosis and treatment are made by consultants. They have ultimate responsibility for a patient's outcome.
Not many other jobs where a single error can kill someone.

Compare this to soccer, grown men being paid a fortune for kicking a ball of air around a field.

This was also money that was originally promised to them in their contract.

[Deleted User]

Are the teachers, and all the other victims of FEMPI, going to sue the state now for breach of contract?

I distinctly remember Lenihan giving his senior civil servants a 25% pay rise while bringing in some of those cutbacks, and Howlin, Burton and the rest of the smoked salmon socialists in the Labour Party giving their friends/advisers huge payrises at precisely the same time as they introduced FEMPI cutting back everybody else's salary.

"Do as we say, not as we do" government.

[Deleted User]

Deleted User wrote: »

Are the teachers, and all the other victims of FEMPI, going to sue the state now for breach of contract?

Are we short of teachers? Do they make life or death decisions?

Id regard consultants as being in another league altogether from regular workers.

Mikenesson

Topgear on Dave wrote: »

Are we short of teachers? Do they make life or death decisions?

Id regard consultants as being in another league altogether from regular workers.

Pretty sure there is a teacher shortage

Graces7

Pugzilla wrote: »

They deserve to be paid well considering the length and complexity of training, long hours, pressure, liability they have.
All the major decisions regarding diagnosis and treatment are made by consultants. They have ultimate responsibility for a patient's outcome.
Not many other jobs where a single error can kill someone.

Compare this to soccer, grown men being paid a fortune for kicking a ball of air around a field.

This was also money that was originally promised to them in their contract.

Given the dire state of the health service,it would have been a deeply meaningful and appreciated gesture to forgo this pay increase.

eric hoone

Graces7 wrote: »

Given the dire state of the health service,it would have been a deeply meaningful and appreciated gesture to forgo this pay increase.

I think the really noble gesture would be making new colleagues pay parity part of the deal. Recruiting new consultants is a ticking time bomb in the health services

Pugzilla

Graces7 wrote: »

Given the dire state of the health service,it would have been a deeply meaningful and appreciated gesture to forgo this pay increase.

Doctor and nurse salaries are miniscule in the HSE budget. Main issue is the overbloated administration staff. Too many pencil pushers.

Graces7

Pugzilla wrote: »

Doctor and nurse salaries are miniscule in the HSE budget. Main issue is the overbloated administration staff. Too many pencil pushers.

Even so. Seeking more is a bad example. And will escalate..

Mikenesson

At least this time they haven't said their pay increase will benefit their patients...

Or have they?

Pugzilla

It's not a pay increase as it was part of their original contracts.

Mikenesson

Pugzilla wrote: »

It's not a pay increase as it was part of their original contracts.

As long as they're not using their patients as bait

That's the usual tactic from them

Anita Blow

realitykeeper wrote: »

I hear hospital consultants negotiated a pay deal which included back pay. They also seemed to take issue with being "spied" upon to make sure they were not double jobbing.

It wasn't a pay deal. The state breached their employment contract and owed them money they were contractually entitled to.
Where is the ample evidence? The private investigators the state hired to look for evidence of breach of contract found that the vast majority of consultants were working the contractual public hours
.

It's also fairly worrying to see some of the public support the state hiring private investigators against groups of private citizens.

realitykeeper wrote: »

There is already ample evidence that the hospital consultants have worked in private practice while on the taxpayers payroll and the never ending waiting lists are a testament in themselves. Even the waiting lists are the tip of the iceberg because so so many who should have been treated, died waiting for a begrudging consultant whose only interest was to get back to his private patients as quickly as possible.

If you think consultants are the cause of the waiting list then you're delusional. The HSE dictates how many operations can be performed, what types of operations can be performed and when.

realitykeeper wrote: »

Mind you, I am all in favor of private healthcare but consultants must work for one or the other. It is clear these consultants cannot be trusted and they need a boss with the power to sack them to follow them around and to shout at them for slacking off. Consultants should only be paid for what they do and not by the hour.

That's exactly what's happening now. Over the past couple of years there has been an exodus of consultants into private practice only. At the start of this year, the Mater lost 3 of it's Orthopaedic surgeons to private practice, each with their own sub-specialisation which the public has now lost and is very difficult to replace. It's why the HSE is currently experiencing its worst consultant staffing crisis. I believe at the moment we have >150 unfilled consultant posts and of those we have filled there has only been 1-2 applicants.

realitykeeper wrote: »

Finally, hospital spending (like government spending) should stop and every demand for payment scrutinized for value in order to end waste. If a hospital overspends, the claimants should only be allowed claim from the individuals responsible and their personal estate. Am I wrong?

The health service would grind to a halt. Doctors can't clock out at 5pm if work still needs to be done, and we're so poorly staffed that you end up doing the work of multiple people. If a worker can't claim for overtime after working their 100th hour of the week then they will just quit.

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Don't a lot of contracts have clauses against you taking up a second role, particularly if it can be argued that it impacts your primary one?

The contract in question required consultants to give up their private practice or significantly reduce their hours and increase their public hours, weekend work and on-call work. The consultants agreed to this in 2008 and implemented all their contractual obligations and have continued to do so despite the DoH not paying their pay increase as per their end of the contract. In fact not only did they not receive the contractual pay increase, consultant pay was then cut by 30% as part of FEMPI cuts.

Deleted User wrote: »

Are the teachers, and all the other victims of FEMPI, going to sue the state now for breach of contract?

This revised contract was not a part of FEMPI.

Anita Blow

Mikenesson wrote: »

As long as they're not using their patients as bait

That's the usual tactic from them

When have they ever used this tactic? The medical profession has has gone on strike once in decades and even then they covered all necessary duties so patients didn't suffer. Even in this case, consultants continued to work the greater public workload despite the HSE reneging on their end of the deal

Mikenesson

Anita Blow wrote: »

When have they ever used this tactic? The medical profession has has gone on strike once in decades and even then they covered all necessary duties so patients didn't suffer. Even in this case, consultants continued to work the greater public workload despite the HSE reneging on their end of the deal

They use patient care as cover or a diversion when they're actually seeking to enrich themselves

They've done it plenty of times in the past

Anita Blow

Mikenesson wrote: »

They use patient care as cover or a diversion when they're actually seeking to enrich themselves

They've done it plenty of times in the past

Like when?

realitykeeper

kneemos wrote: »

Consultants are allowed work publicly and privately.

What you want is a Soviet style set up. What they do outside their allotted public hours is their own business.

But I am talking about what they are doing instead of doing their jobs.

realitykeeper

Mikenesson wrote: »

Pretty sure there is a teacher shortage

People say we are "short" of things in this country without putting it to the market to find out. Ireland once had a fully privatized construction sector, now it doesn`t and lo and behold, construction slows to a crawl. If consultants, teachers etc are ever to get their act together, the public services must end permanently.

Blazer

There's an eye doctor in Cork who specialises in kids eyesight (opthamology).
She's in her mid 60's and trying her best to retire for the past few years but the HSE use the kids as a pressure point as there is only one other as far as I'm aware in the area so she's still working away.
She's probably raking it in but what's the point of it if you can't retire when you want to and kick back and relax.
As someone said consultants salaries might seem high but most of them are worth every penny of it. They study for upto 10 years of medicine and stay uptraining throughout their careers so its damn hard work and not one that any joe soap can do.

realitykeeper

Paulzx wrote: »

Ehhhhhhh.........the consultants sued the state for breach of contract and won.

Why would the state sue them for breach of contract when they've already lost the case.

I'm guessing you're not a member of Mensa

You seem to think that one case resolves everything. The case pertained to a single contract which should never have been on offer in the first place. The state failed to make a counter claim which could be down to stupidity, incompetence or corruption. The judiciary are as bad as the consultants so no surprises there.

You are correct, I am not a member of Mensa but knowledge without wisdom has negative value. For example, a few years ago, really clever people who earned large salaries took out enormous mortgages and then the housing market crashed. They were still clever, just not very wise.

thomasdylan

realitykeeper wrote: »

You seem to think that one case resolves everything. The case pertained to a single contract which should never have been on offer in the first place. The state failed to make a counter claim which could be down to stupidity, incompetence or corruption. The judiciary are as bad as the consultants so no surprises there.

You are correct, I am not a member of Mensa but knowledge without wisdom has negative value. For example, a few years ago, really clever people who earned large salaries took out enormous mortgages and then the housing market crashed. They were still clever, just not very wise.

I imagine there was no counterclaim because there was no legal basis for one. What kind of counterclaim could be offered?

A lot of your comments don't seem to make any sense.