Kildare TD calls for report into Naas General Hospital

A Kildare North TD has called on Naas Hospital and the HSE to come forward with a full report on how top doctors at the hospital ended up working and getting paid as private consultants at a time when they should have been working for the public system.

Deputy Aidan Farrelly (SD) made his call after a report by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) - which pays out more than €200 million a year to purchase care for patients who are waiting longest for treatment - revealed that Naas Hospital was one of three that failed to allocate the funds correctly.

The report also revealed that the hospital paid the consultants for running special clinics to reduce waiting lists, instead of also paying all the ancillary staff - nurses and administrative - involved. This was in contravention of how the NTPF says the funding should be allocated.

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That care is sometimes purchased from private hospitals, but in a process known as ‘insourcing’, it is sometimes purchased from public hospitals on the strict understanding that the care is provided outside of the staffs’ core activity and in addition to their regular work.

The report revealed that the special clinics in Naas were not conducted outside the core business hours of the hospital.

“This means that consultants in Naas were working and getting paid as private consultants at a time when they should have been working for the public system,” Deputy Farrelly explained.

“And because the supporting staff such as nurses and admin staff who were involved in that work were not paid by the NPTF as they should have been, the public system was paying to support the consultants’ private work.

“In layman’s language, this means the taxpayer was being fleeced for private work by consultants. I will be insisting that we will get a chance to see how much this cost.”

At a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee on July 15 last the CEO of the NTPF, Fiona Brady, told Deputy Farrelly that Naas Hospital had volunteered a full disclosure when she was doing a compliance review.

She told the Social Democrats TD that the NTPF agrees a price per patient which is intended to cover the consultant pay, the clerical staff pay and the nursing pay.

“We do not pay consultants directly, only the hospitals, and then they pay the individual staff,” she said.

“In Naas hospital, they had been paying the consultant per patient, which is against the rules….and the national financial regulations.”

She also admitted that the NTPF has “no oversight of how payments are made at hospitals”.

When Deputy Farrelly questioned her on the consequences for breaking the funding agreement rules, she said the matter had been escalated to the HSE and its CEO Bernard Gloster had sent in internal auditors to review the situation.

Deputy Farrelly has made several requests to meet with the Minister for Health since that exchange at the Public Accounts Committee, however to date those requests have been declined.