Mr. John Swords:

The answer is "Yes". There is wastage in hospitals. We have been addressing this in recent years. At the national distribution centre we have introduce point-of-use management. The idea is that procurement people manage at the point of use, not the clinicians. Clinicians are busy trying to get back to their patients and so on and we have taken that workload away from them. We have introduced Kanban, a point-of-use management system. This involves the management of stock at the point of use and it reduces the wastage. In other words, we introduce materials requirement planning into the ward and there is assessment of the stock required at ward level on an ongoing basis rather than on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Even if a ward was to reduce or change its function in some way, we can amend the arrangements to bring in the required stock. This is being received well by clinicians. We have been able to measure it in Tullamore. The nurses there gave us the facts. Between four and six hours per week per ward of clinical time was transferred back to front-line activity, and that is only in respect of the time of clinicians. The actual reduction of inventory that we have seen ranges between 30% and 45%. That is where we get our savings from. This is monitored on a daily basis with clinicians and active management. We are bringing that forward.

We reckon there are approximately 600 locations where point-of-use management can be introduced throughout the HSE. At this stage, 50% of that target is already completed. As we roll the national distribution centre operation into full implementation we will be taking care of the other 300 locations.