Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

It is always unacceptable when somebody has elective surgery cancelled. To put the matter in perspective, the percentage of cancellations is between 2% and 3% per annum, although that is still too many. I was reading that in the United Kingdom 15% of elective work is done by the private sector for these kinds of reasons.

The HSE recently commissioned process mapping exercises of ten of our acute hospitals to examine their practices throughout the hospital. Those exercises are now to hand, I have had an opportunity to read them and they will be published shortly. They form the basis for the HSE's allocation of funds to those hospitals during this year.

The recommendations will require major internal reform of how hospitals operate. For example, in the Cork area the time a patient spends in hospital is on average one day shorter for every procedure than for the Dublin area — I do not know why this should be the case. Much of the difficulty clearly has to do with pressure, although I do not want to take from the fact that there are many pressure areas, such as issues concerning older patients and the speed at which they can be accommodated in more suitable accommodation when doctors medically discharge them. Issues also arise with regard to work practices, discharge policies, length of stay and so on. These matters form the main basis of the reform now underway, which, in particular, will this year take the route of the funding allocations.

I do not have information on the benchmarking exercise. I do not think it went into the kind of detail to which the Deputy refers, which was one of the flaws of the exercise.

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