Charlie O'Connor (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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Question 169: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children the number of hospitals that have had financial penalties imposed on them for inefficiencies since 2002; and the total of the fines imposed since 2002. [18204/05]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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Casemix is an internationally accepted management system for monitoring and evaluating health services which allows for the collection, categorisation and interpretation of hospital patient data related to the types of cases treated, in order to assist hospitals define their products, measure their productivity and assess quality. Casemix is used as part of the budgetary process in order to base funding on measured costs and activity rather than on less objective systems of resource allocation and to fund hospitals based on their mix of patients.

The national Casemix programme compares the costs and activity of the 37 hospitals that participate in the programme. It operates a 'budget neutral' policy which rewards efficiency by retargeting funds from less efficient hospitals to those who have demonstrated that additional funding will result in real benefits. The Casemix budget adjustments that were applied as part of the financial allocations for 2002-05 are set out in the following table. Many hospitals that lose funding under the programme review their management and go on to gain funding in following years.

I am committed to rewarding good performance and as Casemix is the most internationally accepted 'performance related' acute hospital activity programme, I am committed to the expansion of Casemix in order that it be used as a central pillar in acute hospital funding policy.