Written answers

Tuesday, 22 June 2010

Department of Health and Children

Health Services

8:00 am

Photo of Bernard DurkanBernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 121: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if she intends to review the structural and operational procedures in the Health Service Executive having particular regard to increased public concern at its failure to deliver the degree of reliable services at all levels throughout the country notwithstanding the existence of competent and dedicated personnel within the service who are becoming increasingly frustrated by the bureaucracy of the system and whose talents and abilities are not being utilised in the delivery of a properly structured modern health service; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25984/10]

Photo of Mary HarneyMary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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The HSE was established on 1 January 2005 as a single, national authority with responsibility for the management and delivery of health and personal social services. It replaced the seven regional health boards, the Eastern Regional Health Authority, the three area health boards and a number of other agencies. The important issue is monitoring the HSE and working together to improve its performance. What is needed is better performance of services, rather than restructuring of organisations.

I believe that the focus must be on improving performance further and achieving greater integration in the delivery of services to patients, by building on the progress that the HSE has achieved across a number of fronts in reforming our health and personal social services. The strategic reasons for establishing the HSE as a single national authority remain as valid as ever. Reform of our public health system was driven by the need to bring about improvements in services to patients and other users through the organisation and delivery of consistent national services, based on objective standards and implemented in a uniform manner across the country that made the most beneficial, effective and efficient use of taxpayers' money.

The work now underway to implement a national cancer control strategy was made possible by the unified HSE structure. Similarly, the implementation of national uniform standards for nursing homes across the country has been greatly facilitated by a single structure, and the implementation of primary care and chronic illness strategies also requires a single national management structure. Over time these strategies will deliver real and tangible benefits that would not have been possible to achieve under the previously fragmented system.

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