The Productivity and Savings Taskforce will examine how the multi-billion health budget is being spent and is meeting for the first time today.
The Taskforce has been established to "ensure that the maximum amount of patient care is delivered for the funding available".
It will examine the use of new technology, new ways of working and the future cost of healthcare – and will have full oversight of all HSE projects.
Minister Stephen Donnelly told Newstalk Breakfast that the drugs budget is one area where he hoped the Taskforce could identify savings.
“There are big opportunities around getting more out of our medicine budgets, for example,” he said.
“We spent €3.2 billion on our drugs budget… For every 1% savings in the drugs budget, we free up about €30 million for new medicines.”
Last year’s budget allocated the Department of Health €22.5 billion in funding but there have been complaints the settlement is inadequate for the health service’s needs given Ireland's growing and ageing population.
Equally, Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe has labelled the Department’s handling of its budget a “significant risk to our public finances”.
Minister Donnelly also said the health service could make better use of the resources it has.
“It’s much more effective to hire full-time people than to have agency staff or rely on overtime,” he said.
“Reductions in litigation payments; the State pays out vast amounts of money on litigation, which we should be avoiding by identifying the patients safety issues and fixing those issues.”
Seven day service
Last year, HSE Chief Executive Bernard Gloster wrote to staff outlining plans for a permanent seven-day roster for all hospital staff going forward.
Minister Donnelly said the Department is making “good progress” as it implements the change.
“I was delighted to be able to report just a few days ago that over 1,500 consultants have now signed up to the new public only contract,” he said.
“We’ve added just about 1,000 consultants since the start of 2020 and what we’re now seeing is reports from HIQA beginning to come back and reference the fact that weekend discharge from hospitals is going up.
“Senior decision makers are on site for scheduled and unscheduled care.
“The result of that is that waiting lists are falling, [the numbers on] trolleys are falling.
“There’s a way to go; it takes several years obviously.
“It’s a massive change to go from five days a week to seven days a week.”
Minister Donnelly said this is all part of a “really serious agenda of reform” and the Government has also increased the number of hospital beds.
“In terms of capacity, we’ve added over 1,000 beds,” he said.
“We’ve added over 25,000 additional healthcare workers, thousands more nurses, doctors, midwives, health and social care professionals.”
Main image: Stephen Donnelly.
