Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Farrell on assuming the role of Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts. I think she will be excellent, and I wish her every success.

I thank our witnesses for joining us this morning for what I hope will be an enlightening and helpful discussion on how manage the significant resources that we invest in our health service on the part of our taxpayers. I also thank them for the work they do every day in an exceptionally challenging environment.

To start, I will tell two stories, both of which are interactions with the health service in this country. From those interactions, I will give my suggestions as to how we could and should make it much better. In July 2021, to be frank, a driver ran over me in Moycullen just outside Galway city. I suffered a serious injury to my leg. I was taken immediately by ambulance to University Hospital Galway, UHG, and I received world-class care from the surgeons, clinicians, nursing staff and physiotherapy staff there. I have recovered to an excellent extent as a result of the expert, kind and supportive care but in the post-operative phase of that experience, I had to attend the orthopaedic clinic in Merlin Park on four or five occasions. I had to meet the surgeon and see how progress was going. First, I got a letter in the post each time, which stated when my appointment was. I then walked into the orthopaedic centre in Merlin Park, queued up at the lovely little reception area and eventually a very helpful member of staff rolled back the glass window and asked my name. I handed in the letter and the staff member fumbled about in a filing cabinet and my file was taken out. The very helpful person wrote a note on a piece of paper, handed it to me and instructed me to walk across the campus from there to the X-ray clinic in Merlin Park, at which point another person rolled back another glass screen. I handed the person the piece of paper, who handed me another piece of paper and told me to queue for the X-ray, which did not take long and was an exceptionally efficient part of the service. The result of that X-ray was sent electronically back to the orthopaedic clinic, and I walked across the campus and waited in the queue for my interaction. I received very supportive advice from my surgeon, and indeed the physiotherapist, and then I went home. Approximately three weeks later, another letter would arrive in the post and the whole process of slips of paper and walking over and back in Merlin Park would reoccur. That was one interaction.

A previous interaction was when a close member of my family was diagnosed with cancer. Thankfully, she is now fully recovered, again as a result of the world-class expert care provided by our clinicians and nurses in our health system. She became violently ill five times during the chemotherapy regime. Each time she did, I travelled with her into UHG. We had to present at the emergency department. There was no other way of accessing the oncology service other than to go through the emergency department, which I question in terms of the person's compromised immunity as a result of the chemotherapy, but in we went. The person at the little front desk rolled back the glass window and asked for her name, address and PPS number, all of which was taken down. We then sat for two, three, four, sometimes five hours in the emergency department, awaiting assessment, only to be told she was being referred to the oncology department, which was in the same building on the third floor. We then got into a lift, went up to the oncology department and presented at another desk. On the first occasion, just as this was happening, the very helpful woman behind the desk asked for the details. Halfway through the process of this information being handed over, I questioned the person behind the desk and told her that we gave this information four hours ago downstairs. She told me they use a different computer system. This is the same building, the same patient and on the same day. She had to give all of her personal information, which she did not have a problem doing, to be input into two different computer systems working and operating within the same building. That happened each time on the five occasions in the subsequent months. She had to give that information over and over again.

We have a fundamental problem in this country with how we manage our patients' health records and how we have studiously avoided the use of technology for many years in making our health system much more efficient, more cost-effective and safer in how we care for and interact with our patients. We had at one point, not very long ago, a world-renowned expert in patient management, Professor Martin Curley, and the establishment of a patient electronic health record system. He lasted a year in the role.

He resigned in early 2023 out of sheer frustration from his experience of not alone an inability to reform or innovate, but an absolute opposition to reform or innovate how we use technology in the management of our interaction with our population and people every day.

I am also a patient of my local GP and dentist. As most people do, I have had several interactions with them during the past year or two. Every time I do that, I get a message on my phone stating that my appointment with Dr. X is next Friday at 10.30 a.m., for example. I go to Dr. X. It is a great service. When Dr. X opens his computer, he can see every single interaction he has had with me for the past 15 years. I know that because I asked him. Every other GP operating in that practice has access to that exact same service. When I leave that building, Dr. X sends my prescription electronically to my chosen pharmacy. The same happens when I interact with my dentist. Again, it is all done electronically, and it is very efficient and time effective.

When Martin Curley left the HSE, he said that he thought "he had died and gone to hell". When he began working with the HSE, he said: "I think we can safely say many people have died, many people have had extended stays in ... circumstances because the doctors and nurses don’t have access to the information they need [at their fingertips] to make the right decision." Countries such as Denmark, Estonia, Finland and, increasingly, Spain, figured this out a very long time ago. We position ourselves internationally, rightly so, as being leading edge when it comes to innovation and technology. That is why some of the world's foremost technology companies base themselves here. Why has our national health service yet to figure out how to do something that most other countries of similar resources and expertise have done a very long time ago? I would like somebody to tell me why that is the case.