Vol. 408 No. 1
56 Mr. D'Arcy asked the Minister for Health whether he has satisfied himself with the present arrangements for funding hospitals which is based on the case-mix of hospitals and appropriate cost levels; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
The present funding arrangements for hospitals are not based on a costed case-mix system. In the case of the public voluntary hospitals an individual allocation is made by my Department; that allocation is determined largely on an incremental basis, but takes account of the individual role of each hospital. In the case of health boards, an overall allocation is notified and it is the responsibility of each board to strike an appropriate budget for their own hospitals. However, the health board hospital budgets must be consistent with the overall health board service plan which is discussed and agreed with my Department.
I acknowledge that the allocation methodology for acute hospitals needs to be refined in the context of resource allocation for the health service in general. Work is continuing in my Department on developing the appropriate mechanisms to enable budgets to be determined prospectively on the basis of agreed output expressed in case-mix terms.
