Written Answers. - Patients' Charter.
Eamon Walsh
Ceist:
46
Mr. E. Walsh
asked the
Minister for Health
the reason persons with appointments to see consultants are required to wait for hours and are then seen by assistants; if the consultant or the assistant is paid for such visits; his views on such practices; and if he will introduce a patients' charter similar to the farmers' charter.
[9760/95]
Limerick East): The Department of Health introduced a Charter of Rights for Hospital Patients in 1992.
The objective of the Charter is to ensure that the health service becomes more responsive to the needs of individual patients and that there is a code of practice available which sets out what patients have a right to expect when they make use of hospital services.
Under the Charter, patients have the right to be given an indiviudal appointment time for out-patient services. I am aware that a small number of hospitals are still experiencing some difficulty in giving individual appointment times to patients attending out-patient clinics. In some of these cases, individual appointments are being gradually introduced to out-patient clinics. The Department is pursuing these matters with the hospitals involved.
In accordance with the Charter, all hospitals are required to have detailed complaints procedures in place. Patients may, therefore, register complaints directly with the hospital authorities about any aspect of the hospital service, including delays at out-patient level.
Under the terms and conditions of the consultants contract, the requirement to personally discharge all of the consultants' contractual commitments does not preclude the consultant from delegating aspects of his or her scheduled work to other appropriately qualified medical staff. As both consultants and other hospital doctors are paid all-inclusive salaries the question of payment for individual visits does not arise.
My Department's Strategy document "Shaping a Healthier Future" gives an undertaking to re-orientate the health services so that they are more responsive to patients' needs. This Government is committed to the provision of a quality health service which provides a high level of patient satisfaction with regard to both the outcome of treatment and the process through which it is delivered.
