Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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748. To ask the Minister for Health if changes have been made to the private hospital agreement to allow for private consultants to treat existing patients; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9608/20]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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A major part of the Government's Action Plan in response to Covid-19 was to substantially increase the capacity of public healthcare facilities to cope with the anticipated additional demand. In order to urgently ramp up capacity for acute care facilities, an arrangement was agreed with the private hospitals to use their facilities as part of the public system on a temporary basis, to provide essential services. A Heads of Terms of an Agreement between the HSE and the Private Hospitals was agreed at the end of March 2020 and all 18 of the acute private hospitals signed up to it. Under the agreement,  the HSE has access to 100% of the capacity of those hospitals and they are linked with the Hospital Group for their region.  Consultants who work wholly for the private hospitals have been offered temporary locum public patient only (Type A) contracts for the duration of the arrangement. Under the agreement all patients who are being treated in the hospitals will be treated as public patients and will prioritised based on clinical needs. Provision was made under the agreement to allow for continuity of care for patients who were in a private hospital or attending for treatment at the time the Heads of Terms of the Agreement were agreement, on the grounds that these patients would be treated as public patients.

The arrangement with the private hospitals was reviewed at the end of May and the Government decided that the existing arrangement should not be extended beyond the end of June. It has however mandated the HSE to negotiate a new arrangement with private hospitals which would provide the HSE with full access to private hospital capacity in the event of a surge of Covid-19 and separately with ongoing agreed access, to enable the HSE to meet essential and elective care needs.