Something is rotten in Hawkins House

See here my column from the Medical Independent from 21 June on the failure to make progress on waiting times in Emergency Departments and elective hospital treatment and the role of James Reilly’s Special Delivery Unit 

James Reilly’s well paid advisors

James Reilly, Minister for Health is over  his quota of ministerial advisors and without any specific expertise in his priority area of health reform – universal health insurance…

Reilly’s special advisor paid €160,000 for 80% of his time, works here ‘on average’ 2 weeks a month

Minister James Reilly’s  much heralded special advisor Martin Connor, who is the most senior health policy advisor in the Department of Health’s Special Delivery Unit, is also a research fellow in Stanford University, in the heart of the silicon valley in California.

‘Cautious optimism’? New unambitious targets for hospital wait times

On Wednesday 25 January, Minister James Reilly held a news conference to announce new targets on reducing the numbers of trolleys and wait times for hospital treatment. It was good news all-round… ‘Cautious optimism’ was the prevailing sentiment of the day.

Waiting for others to die – the only way to get a nursing home bed

HSE figures released today (1 September) reveal that 1,100 older people who are medically in need of a nursing home place and have been through a rigorous financial assessment are languishing on a waiting list for that bed. When the Nursing Home Support Scheme (the so-called Fair Deal) was launched less than two years ago it was heralded as “accessible, affordable and anxiety free”. Obviously it is proving to be none of these (it is not accessible for those on the waiting list, it is not affordable for the State as it as run out of money and it is not anxiety free for the older people and their families who wait for a nursing home bed) so what does the Fair Deal waiting list mean for those on it and why is there a waiting list?