Catherine Murphy
Question:384. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Health the number of persons cared for in Clane General Hospital under the agreement between an association (details supplied) and the HSE. [10078/20]
View answerTuesday, 9 June 2020
Questions (384)
Written answers
A major part of the Government's Action Plan in response to Covid-19 was to substantially increase the capacity of public healthcare facilities to cope with the anticipated additional demand. In order to urgently ramp up capacity for acute care facilities, an arrangement was agreed with the private hospitals to use their facilities as part of the public system on a temporary basis, to provide essential services. A Heads of Terms of Agreement between the HSE and the Private Hospitals was agreed at the end of March 2020 and all 18 of the acute private hospitals signed up to it. Under the arrangement, all patients in the private hospitals are treated as public patients and their treatment is prioritised based on clinical need. Provision was made under the agreement to allow for continuity of care for patients who were in a private hospital or attending for treatment at the time the Heads of Terms of Agreement were agreed, on the grounds that these patients would be treated as public patients.
The agreement was reviewed at the end of May and the Government decided that the existing arrangement should not be extended beyond the end of June. It has however mandated the HSE to negotiate a new arrangement with private hospitals which would provide the HSE with full access to private hospital capacity in the event of a surge of Covid-19 and separately with ongoing agreed access, to enable the HSE to meet essential and elective care needs.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic the HSE had to take measures to defer all non-urgent elective scheduled care activity, including outpatient clinics. This was to ensure patient safety and that all appropriate resources were made available for COVID-19 related activity and time-critical essential work. This decision was in line with the advice issued by the World Health Organisation, the measures set out in the Action Plan in Response to Covid-19 and the recommendation of NPHET. The NPHET has now recommended that steps be taken to resume non-urgent scheduled care in the context of the safe care guidelines set out by its Expert Advisory Group.
The HSE has been working with National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) to establish a mechanism to allow for return of electronic data from Private Hospitals. This system went live the week ending the18th May with guidance issued to private hospitals around the process for submission of data. In order to ensure early reporting of activity the HSE has put a manual data reporting system in place with private hospitals. This supports the return of a limited dataset which remains subject to validation based on electronic data returns through the NTPF.
My Department has been advised of the following preliminary activity figures for Clane Hospital (UPMC Kildare) from the start of the arrangement until 28 May 2020 - 118 inpatient/ daycase/ diagnostics and 390 outpatient appointments.