Will the controversy that surrounds our Health Services ever end? Will we ever see a health service that offers good service? When the Health Boards were scrapped and replaced by the HSE, the system fell asunder and by the way E stands for 'Executives' and executives we all imagine are people who know or should know how to handle exceptional situations.
Unfortunately there were too many executives who failed to pool their ideas to give us all a better service. So the systems, as we all knew it, fell apart and we ended up with 'too many chief and not enough Indians', working a system that could be classed 'cat and mouse'.
I do always wonder why politicians from all parties and executives from outside and within the HSE priorities are to close down services that could and should be making money.
Why do these people not look at the HSE as a service provider that offers top class service and get paid for this service? The Health Service in Switzerland is top of the range.
They build hospitals that's easy accessible. These hospitals may be on the side of a mountain beside the ski slopes with a proper train, tram and bus service taking patients or visitors to the front door of the hospital.
They have built or allowed for ample car parking spaces within easy reach of the hospital. They have allowed for and built top of the range food service facilities and most importantly these services generate good revenue and profit.
The patients who can afford to pay are charged maybe an over the top price for the healthcare service that the hospital provides. The most important issue is that you get what you pay for so patients and others are not marching the streets of Geneva or Lausanne demanding that their hospital stays open.
In a world of 'Dragon Dens' approach with 'executives' only too eager to invite us to seminars about the best approach to take to survive in business. The people most in need of this advice are most likely too proud to learn new ideas. In Ireland we have seen too many organisations that are funded by the taxpayer operated as a 'non profit organisation'.
Terms like these should be banned from the English language. Terms and phrases like these simply mean we are not for profit, so the approach is we loose money. This in effect is a disincentive to all those hard working conscientious genuine people to do less just in case we make money.
Where has all our commonsense approach of past generations gone? Why can't the HSE executives, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Health and a few level headed business people sit down and put a survival plan in place?
Our health services are haemorrhaging not millions but billions of euros every year while the best they can offer is an eighty year old patient lying on a trolley in a hospital corridor.
It's a disgrace that people who worked hard to build this country are treated in such a fashion while their pet dog or cat may be afforded top of the range service and more rights in a kennel down the road.
My idea of a commonsense approach to keep our hospitals open may be farfetched as unions are not too much in favour of private experts meddling in public service organisations. Very few politicians have the will to look at the alternatives to any loss-making venture.
The easiest approach is often 'close it down' and we save money, without looking at the implications and the cost involved after hospitals and hospital services are closed down. Should we not study the real cost and losses to the state when ambulances are grounded? No revenue from diesel. The loss on the sale of ambulances, the insurance, the tax the state collect, the servicing of vehicles, the list is endless. To add to all this one has the stress and inconvenience caused to patients who may have to travel two hundred miles round trip for to wait hours in a so called centre of excellence that gives a worse service that the hospital they closed.
It's obvious when you close a service in Roscommon or Portlaoise that it puts pressure on Galway and Dublin. So where do we start? For twenty years the present approach hasn't worked. Staff in hospitals are totally disillusioned and this affects performance and service to the patient. Unless people at the coalface who are the human face of our health service are given the confidence that they are respected and appreciated we will never have a proper health service.

 

One of the answers to this and all the other unsolvable issues in our health system is to disband the structure and systems that don't work, area by area and start the rebuilding process again.
It may cost millions or billions yet it may be worth it. If staff can work and take pride in an organisation that once offered respect and service to the people of Ireland while the people who get sick feel they are no longer fearful of having to go to hospital hoping it wont close up while they are waiting on a trolley.
It's worth remembering some patients can remember in the past when we had a top class hospital service in an era when we had no money. So why should money be the issue? It is an issue because it's used as an excuse for common sense.