Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 24 Mar 1998

Vol. 488 No. 7

Written Answers. - Hospital Services.

Liz McManus

Question:

248 Ms McManus asked the Minister for Health and Children the original financial allocation, the percentage increase over the previous year, the number of inpatients treated, the average duration of stay, the total number of inpatient days, the percentage increase over the previous year, the estimated daily cost per inpatient and the number of outpatients treated for each of the years 1996 and 1997 in relation to Cork Regional, South Infirmary/Victoria, Mercy and Mallow hospitals. [7411/98]

Minister for Health and Children (Mr. Cowen)

The information requested by the Deputy is set out in the following table. It should be noted that since annual financial statements for 1997 are not yet available for the hospitals in question, the table presents comparative estimates of daily in-patient costs for 1996 and 1997 based solely on the overall financial allocation divided by the total bed days used for each hospital.

My Department operates a detailed mechanism for attributing costs to the different elements of a hospital's activity by means of specialty costing which enables a more reliable estimate to be made of the daily cost per inpatient. This methodology allows the exclusion of both costs and activity related to outpatient services, long-stay cases, day cases, dialysis, obstetrics and psychiatry.

The specialty costing system operates in thirty of the largest hospitals in the country. Mallow General Hospital is not currently one of the hospitals submitting specialty costs. For the other three hospitals the daily costs per inpatient for 1996 based on specialty costings were Cork University Hospital, £248; Mercy Hospital, £197; and South Infirmary/Victoria, £162.

TABLE

Hospital	Financial Allocation (£m)	In-Patients Discharged	Bed Days Used	Average Length of Stay	Estimated Daily Cost per In- Patient (£)	Out-Patients Attendances
	1996	1997	% Increase	1996	1997*	% Increase	1996	1997*	% Increase	1996	1997*	% Increase	1996	1997	% Increase	1996	1997*	% Increase
Cork University	42.327	45.710	7.99	29,190	27,504	-5.78	179,576	184,129	2.54	6.15	6.69	8.82	235.71	248.25	5.32	79,552+	71,531+	N.A.
South Infirmary/Victoria	9.855	10.522	6.77	9,853	9,552	-3.05	52,549	51,762	-1.50	5.33	5.42	1.61	187.54	203.28	8.39	37,061	36,501	-1.51
Mercy	13.484	14.750	9.39	13,249	12,060	-8.97	66,890	62,002	-7.31	5.05	5.14	1.83	201.58	237.90	18.02	20,872	20,495	-1.81
Mallow	4.102	4.308	5.02	3,841	3,927	2.24	22,033	22,302	1.22	5.74	5.68	-1.00	186.18	193.17	3.75	7,079	6,885	-2.74

* Provisional figures.

+ Figures refer to the period January to September.

N.A.: Indicates "Not Available".