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

I am taking this debate on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly. I thank Deputy Kelleher for raising this matter and allowing me the opportunity to discuss with him the report the Minister for Health launched on Tuesday, which signals a fundamental modernisation of our health system organisation in line with best practice internationally. The traditional practice of providing as many services as possible in every hospital is neither sustainable nor safe. The formation of acute hospitals into groups, each with its own governance and management, will provide an optimum configuration for hospital services to deliver high quality, safe patient care in a cost-effective manner.

The current organisational structures have restricted the development of the management systems and leadership we require to run a world class national hospital network. In reforming these structures, the Minister wants to take the best elements of governance and autonomy found in our system to create a new governance framework that can yield the benefits of increased independence and greater control of local clinical and managerial leaders to every hospital. The introduction of groups will provide for organisational change in the first instance, giving more autonomy and better enabling the reorganisation of services in a well planned manner.

The hospital groups report is based on a comprehensive consultation process and contains almost 60 recommendations on the formation, management and governance of hospital groups. The objectives of the groups are to achieve the highest standard of quality and uniformity in hospital care across the group, deliver cost effective hospital care in a timely and sustainable manner, encourage and support clinical and managerial leaders, ensure high standards of governance both clinical and corporate and recruit and retain high quality nurses, non-consultant hospital doctors, consultants, allied health professionals and administrators in all our hospitals. The establishment of hospital groups will result in small and larger hospitals working together as teams.

Implementation of the hospital groups report will begin immediately. The Minister intends to seek and appoint chairs of each group within the next two months. Advertisements to seek other board members will be placed in parallel with the process of appointing the group chairs and the subsequent appointment of group CEOs and management teams. All appointments will be made based on the competences the individual brings to the board in line with the HIQA report on Tallaght. This will not prevent appropriate representation of the geographical areas in the group. The need to ensure primary and community care is also covered by the board membership.

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