{"id":56833,"date":"2025-09-11T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T08:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/56833\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T08:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T08:00:10","slug":"curbs-on-external-firms-in-hospitals-will-have-some-impact-on-patient-care-hse-warns-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/56833\/","title":{"rendered":"Curbs on external firms in hospitals will have \u2018some impact\u2019 on patient care, HSE warns \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

New restrictions on hospitals<\/a> engaging external companies that use public-service staff and facilities after normal hours to reduce waiting lists will have \u201csome impact\u201d on patients\u2019 access to treatment, the HSE<\/a> has warned.<\/p>\n

The HSE estimates that up to 4 per cent of those who currently receive such treatment could be affected. This suggests that between 300 and 400 patients per month, who are treated as part of what are known as \u201cinsourcing\u201d initiatives, could be affected.<\/p>\n

New controls on insourcing arrangements were introduced by the HSE at the beginning of September, following a series of controversies that saw initiatives suspended in some hospitals.<\/p>\n

HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster told senior staff insourcing can only be used as a \u201clast resort\u201d, and then only after other steps including the use of regular overtime, agency staff and outside private facilities have been taken. <\/p>\n

New controls also include limiting the duration of contracts with insourcing companies to three months, as well as checks that third-party providers are complying with tax and employment law and not paying public health service staff more than official HSE rates.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Inside the insourcing industry: The multimillion euro business within our public hospitalsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The Department of Health and the HSE are to monitor if, and to what extent, the new rules will impact on waiting lists and times for patients.<\/p>\n

Mr Gloster has proposed to Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill that insourcing be ended completely by next summer. A decision on this is awaited.<\/p>\n

The HSE chief told senior staff \u201cthere is a risk that the extent of these controls will reduce the availability and attractiveness of third-party insourcing from the perspective of providers of those services currently and this in turn will have some impact on access to care\u201d.<\/p>\n

The HSE told The Irish Times the 4 per cent \u201couter risk\u201d figure for those affected was \u201can approximate estimation of patients in receipt of third-party insourced care at a point in time\u201d. <\/p>\n

A report provided to the Minister in June said about 500,000 \u201cinstances of care\u201d were provided to patients in the 27 months from the beginning of 2023 using insourcing arrangements either funded by the HSE or the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF).<\/p>\n

This would suggest that more than 9,000 patients per month, on average, are receiving treatment on foot of insourcing arrangements funded either by the HSE or the NTPF. <\/p>\n

The report to the Minister defined insourcing as the practice of engaging companies or third parties to deliver services, often outside normal working hours, using HSE-owned facilities and equipment. It said that in many cases these providers \u201cmay employ or subcontract staff who are already directly employed by the HSE\u201d.<\/p>\n

The report found that 83 serving or former health staff were acting as directors in 148 companies providing insourcing and outsourcing \u2013 another system that involves buying care in outside private facilities \u2013 arrangements to reduce waiting lists.<\/p>\n

Mr Gloster said insourcing carried risks, presented potential conflicts of interest and governance had become questionable.<\/p>\n

Insourcing arrangements were suspended at Beaumont and Naas hospitals while HSE internal auditors carry out reviews.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Naas hospital voluntarily paused insourcing amid concerns over use of public fundingOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the children\u2019s hospital group CHI \u2013 which runs paediatric hospitals in Dublin \u2013 has told Sinn F\u00e9in health spokesman David Cullinane it cannot provide \u201cwithout disproportionate effort\u201d details on the amount of work carried out by consultants during contracted hours as opposed to under insourcing or other extra-contractual hours.<\/p>\n

Mr Cullinane described the CHI stance as \u201cbreathtaking and arrogant\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important that the health service and the political system can measure value for money. Public-only consultant contracts are important, but if hospitals are not collecting the data on output, we cannot measure what work is being carried out and how effective it is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New restrictions on hospitals engaging external companies that use public-service staff and facilities after normal hours to reduce…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[41061,79,48,3496,18,7005,60,19,17,5002],"class_list":{"0":"post-56833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bernard-gloster","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-david-cullinane","11":"tag-department-of-health","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-hospitals","14":"tag-hse","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-jennifer-carroll-macneill"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}