Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 May 2020
815. Deputy Louise O'Reilly asked the Minister for Health the breakdown of the use of private hospitals to date; the average bed occupancy of hospitals since beginning of the private hospital deal by total and hospital; the number of surgeries or procedures carried out in private hospitals by speciality since the beginning of the private hospital deal; and the number of private consultants signed up to perform under the private hospital deal. [7032/20]
View answerThe Government published the National Action Plan in Response to Covid-19, on March 16 2020. In anticipation of the projected surge in Covid-19 cases and the expected impact on the health care system, a major part of the Action Plan was to urgently ramp up capacity for acute hospital care facilities. A critical element of the strategy was to put in place an arrangement with the private hospitals to use their facilities as part of the public system, to provide essential additional acute hospital services for the duration of the emergency.
The HSE have advised my Department that they have been working with National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) to establish a mechanism to allow for return of electronic data from Private Hospitals. This data will be submitted to the Hospital Pricing Office (HPO) by the NTPF to allow the creation of a HIPE record. The system was set up on the week ending 18th May with guidance issued to private hospitals around the process for submission of data.
In order to ensure early reporting of activity the HSE put a manual data reporting system in place with private hospitals. This is initial data and is subject to validation. While the current dataset does not provide for the full range of information the Deputy has requested, details regarding bed occupancy and the volume of procedures undertaken by private hospitals from March 30th to 14th May, 2020 are set out in the attached document. This data is subject to validation.
In relation to the number of Consultants signed up to perform under the private hospital arrangement, the latest information from Private Hospitals indicates that as of 19th May 2020, 286 Consultants have signed up.
|
Hospital |
Utilisation |
|
Aut Even |
21% |
|
Beacon Clinic |
36% |
|
Blackrock Clinic |
39% |
|
Bons Cork |
66% |
|
Bons Dublin |
34% |
|
Bons Galway |
39% |
|
Bons Limerick |
1% |
|
Bons Tralee |
83% |
|
Galway Clinic |
16% |
|
Hermitage Clinic |
60% |
|
Kingsbridge |
0% |
|
Mater Private Cork |
42% |
|
Mater Private Dublin |
48% |
|
Santry Sports Clinic |
7% |
|
St Francis Hospital |
0% |
|
St Vincents Private |
80% |
|
UPMC Kildare |
71% |
|
UPMC Whitfield |
40% |
|
Grand Total |
43% |
