Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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516. To ask the Minister for Health the efficiencies being achieved in the sectors under his remit regarding the use of shared services; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18835/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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In March 2013 the Health Service Executive established a separate division with specific responsibility for the development and delivery of a portfolio of support services using a shared services delivery model. The division called “Health Business Services” or HBS provides national focussed management to services including Financial Services, Human Resources, Procurement, Estates and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems. While the concept of shared services in the HSE was not new in that a number of previous initiatives had been initiated and certain services centralised with a view to achieving efficiencies, the implementation of a national shared services delivery model had not been previously implemented.

The Health Business Services (HBS) Strategy 2014 – 2016 is pursuing a comprehensive set of specific actions to drive the shared services agenda and enable the Organisation to leverage benefits of scale, process efficiency and the adoption of appropriate technologies that will ultimately deliver cost efficiencies alongside quality customer centred service delivery.

Some examples of benefits and efficiencies being pursued and achieved to date by the HSE would include:

- Efficiencies have been brought about through our Procurement Service to the tune of €250 million since 2010;

- A national distribution (NDC) centre which will deliver savings in the management of inventory across health is currently being implemented.

- Government policy is to have one approach to procurement in health. HBS procurement have developed “One Voice” for health in the area of procurement encompassing all funded agencies. This is in line with the Government decision of April 2013;

- The delivery of recruitment services nationally via the National Recruitment Service achieved with a 62% reduction in core staffing was previously delivered via a number of separate recruitment operations. This initiative has been implemented over a number of years and apart from the efficiencies achieved in the area of staffing complement can report significant efficiencies in terms of a nationally consolidated approach to recruitment advertising and a consolidated approach to the interviewing process which reduces the “days lost to the service” from managers engaged in interviewing;

- All HSE Payroll operations & Accounts Payables are now transitioned under one governance and management structure within the HSE HBS which allows for the standardisation of transactions and reporting and the development of a strategy to rationalise the number of payroll units is being developed;

- HBS is pursuing critical IT enabling projects that will advance the Organisation’s capabilities in terms of pursuing efficiencies such as the introduction of electronic document management for personnel records. This initiative is currently being implemented and will deliver efficiencies in human resource service delivery and will be a key ingredient in advancing ultimately to the introduction of Employee Self Service (ESS) and Manager Self Service (MSS);

- Upon establishment of Tusla a full shared services payroll service was implemented and is being delivered by HBS;

- HBS ERPS have developed consolidated MIS reporting capabilities for all HR & Payroll data.