Yet again today on the News at One, the Minister for Health was subjected to the usual questions about times on trollies, wards not open and so forth. It is easy for journalists to ask about the problem of SUPPY when they should be talking about the excess DEMAND for health services. I can't understand why politicians, who are on the receiving end of all this, never fight back. Is it because they haven't done their homework on the different levels of demand for health services in, say, Dublin and Manchester or, say, Dublin and Copenhagen? Why is the first fortnight of the year very demanding for the health service here? Is it in Manchester and Copenhagen also? Is it because people here have been consuming too much over Christmas and getting no exercise? If that is the case, why are the Government and the media not focusing on that problem? Is it all a game? The media play the role of the great crusaders. The politicians allow themselves to be humiliated in return for the media not asking the questions that are really relevant and that would oblige the Minister for Health, his Department and the HSE to address the real issues?
Has the Department of Health or the HSE (or the universities or the media) done any research on the nature of the demand for health services in this jurisdiction as opposed to other jurisdictions? How much of the bottlenecks that we constantly hear about has to do with our lifestyle, in particular the use and abuse of alcohol and other drugs, legal and illegal? Does the average citizen of Manchester or Copenhagen consume less alcohol than the average Dubliner? Are demands for A&E services in Manchester or Copenhagen less severe than in Dublin and is that a reflection of a healthier lifestyle among Mancunians and Danes? It shouldn't be too difficult to find that out and draw the necessary policy conclusions.
Do general practitioners in Manchester and Copenhagen look after their patients the way GPs once did here or are they just a referral service as seems to be the case here now? Do GPs do house calls in Manchester and Copenhagen unlike here as far as I can tell? A well functioning health service starts with citizens not living unhealthy and undisciplined lives (something their GPs should constantly remind them of as opposed to many GPs merely extracting large amounts of money from their patients every time their patients cross a surgery threshold). Why is the unhealthy lifestyle of so many people, frequently documented, not linked back to the problems with the provision of health care?
Why is their not more emphasis in the need to keep people away from hospitals and attending their GPs instead? There is no point in the Minister for Health making lame appeals on RTE. Action needs to be taken. Many GPs need to up their game, substantially. People need to be turned away from hospitals and referred back to their GPs, all of whom should have a facility for their patients to be seen 24 x 7. Why do hospitals permit GPs to refer patients for hospital attention when it is not always necessary? Why is the HSE not analysing the statistics to identify those GPs who are referring patients unnecessarily to hospital?
The main problem in the health service - which neither the media nor the politicians ever allude to - is that vested interests are more powerful than Government or the health service. Vested interests put their own interests first. That is not the case with the NHS in Britain. There are of course powerful health sector interests there but there is a sense (and I know this from my own experience) that the health service is more important than, and takes precedence over, the interests of the professions, trade unions and others who make up the service. The British Government has always seen itself as being above the vested interests and not as a referee managing the competing demands of the various interests, as is the case here. The weakness of the Government here in the face of strong vested interests is not just confined to the health service but (as with other sectors) politicians seem afraid to address the real issues and the media won't either. Using politicians as the national punchbag is easier for the media and politicians seem to be happy to play along.
Only in Ireland would this situation arise.
No comments :
Post a Comment