The HSE is sick, sadly not terminally
Posted on | January 14, 2008 | 52 Comments
You know the way our health service is the envy of the western world, so wonderfully well run and effective it is? Well, it doesn’t happen by chance you know. Oh no, hospitals have to be kept on their toes, so they do. So if a hospital underperforms then corrective measures must be taken against it. It’s true. Check this out.
Sixteen hospitals across the country are reportedly facing budget cuts of more than €10m this year as punishment for inefficiencies. Reports this morning say Dublin’s Tallaght Hospital will be worst affected, with €2.1m being cut from its annual budget. The deductions are being made under a Department of Health scheme aimed at rewarding or punishing hospitals based on their efficiency levels.
Now, I’m all for measuring a hospital’s efficiency levels, not a problem, but I do have to wonder slightly at whether or not cutting a hospital’s budget is the right way of ensuring future performance.
Health Service: “Right Tallaght Hospital, you have been less efficient than you should be. You’re in big trouble.
Tallaght Hospital: “Well, there’s no question we might have been more efficient, we hold our hands up to that, but you know, there are some mitigating factors.”
Health Service: “Such as?”
Tallaght Hospital: “Oh you know, not being able to hire any new staff, having overcrowded emergency rooms, not having enough beds for patients, not having dedicated units to help people with serious illnesses that other countries have, poor equipment and generally a lack of sufficient funding to cope with all the patients we have.”
Health Service: “I see where you’re coming from there but because you haven’t been as efficient as we would like we are cutting your budget by €2.1m.”
Tallaght Hospital: “That’s not really going to do much to make us more efficient, is it?”
Health Service: “Well, you should have thought of that before you performed so inefficiently. It’s not our problem.”
Tallaght Hospital: “No it’s not your problem. It’s the people who get ill who have the problem, you stupid fucking cunts.”
Is it just me? Is cutting a hospital’s budget going to do anything to improve that hospital’s performance? I can’t imagine how it would and ultimately it’s you and me and whoever else that might get sick that’s being punished, not the hospital. At the end of the day they can just say ‘Well, they took funds from us which left it impossible for us to provide the levels of care needed’.
I’m beginning to wonder if the HSE isn’t being run by some kind of evil genius whose plan is to slowly kill everybody in the country so he can be king of all the land.
It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Similar posts
Comments
52 Responses to “The HSE is sick, sadly not terminally”
Leave a Reply
January 14th, 2008 @ 9:20 am
In the nicest possible way, you’ve got your head up your ass when it comes to the health service.
January 14th, 2008 @ 9:21 am
Can I get an operation for that?
January 14th, 2008 @ 9:22 am
wasn’t Tallagh Hospital praised for being one of the cleanest hospitals in the country a while ago?
HSE probably considers cleaning as being inefficient.
January 14th, 2008 @ 9:22 am
Christ, 20, that makes sense.
Maybe Drumm has a nice twin who could manage the HSE efficiently and has the best interests of the patients at heart?
January 14th, 2008 @ 9:34 am
Did Ms K from the Congo get get her money from the Coome?
January 14th, 2008 @ 9:40 am
Evil genius – or live guinness – makes you wonder
January 14th, 2008 @ 9:41 am
Just another example of the HSE deciding to copy practices which the NHS started and are now regreting – fines and incentives, performance charts, targets, quotas, impressive sounding but empty revolutionaty initiatives.
They’re actively trying to make the health service worser.
January 14th, 2008 @ 9:54 am
I blame John Waters…He surely has something to do with it!
January 14th, 2008 @ 10:09 am
Lets face it, Mary “Jabba The Hut” Harney wants to privatise the whole lot. What they are doing is running it into the ground then they can turn round to the great unwashed and say “we told you it isn’t working , now do you see what a great idea Private Health care is”.
Evil Fuckers , I think the Bloodhound Gang’s song “I hope you die” is meant for these wankers.
January 14th, 2008 @ 10:21 am
Surely if a hospital performs inefficiently it’s the hospital management’s fault. I don’t hear anything about evaluating their performance and dealing with them. Cutting budgets will just mean that important services will become unavailabe more quickly this year. As usual it’s the public that will bear the brunt of this nonsense.
January 14th, 2008 @ 10:26 am
I went into Tallaght Hospital last year with a rapidly worsening chest infection. When the triage nurse asked me if I was in pain, I told her “Only when I breathe.”
Fuckers made me wait 9 hours.
Can we penalise them for not having a sense of humour?
January 14th, 2008 @ 10:27 am
For every one member of frontline staff in the health service, there is some muppet either carrying a clip board, answering someone elses phonecalls or counting boxes. This is when the cuts should be made, more money on healthcare and essential services, less money on pen-pushing, carpet creeping, shiny arses who perpetuate the entire problem. Yep, HSE management have a lot to answer for.
January 14th, 2008 @ 10:48 am
Fuck off, Twenty. It’s our wonderful NHS which is the Envy Of The World (TM).
DK
January 14th, 2008 @ 10:50 am
I think he was being sarcastic there DK.
January 14th, 2008 @ 10:54 am
Well, a couple of thins,
firstly with a bit of luck the recent benchmarking announcement that there will be no pay increases for nurses, gardai and teachers will bring the unions into play and strikes will be called, the government will then have the chance to stand up to the unions once and for all. For to long this government has bowed to union pressure but surely now all the elements are there for them to stand up to them, i.e first year of a 5 year term, slowing economy and the private sector employees are sick of public sector employees whinging about benchmarking. With the government finally breaking the unions they will then be able to streamline the HSE getting rid of the majority of the pencil pushers who make the whole process so utterly inefficient.
Secondly, as people die in hospitals such as Tallaght because of HSE budget cutbacks Mary “Can I have another sandwich” Harney will not be held accountable. The HSE are a very convenient buffer between her and responsibility, one that I am sure she will be reluctant to get rid of.
Anyway, sorry about the rant, this subject really grinds my gears.
January 14th, 2008 @ 10:56 am
I suspect DK was also being sarcastic, Monkey Balls.
the government will then have the chance to stand up to the unions once and for all.
Bertie, the ultimate shop steward, standing up to the unions? I’m doubtful.
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:04 am
Pants Man,
I doubt if this “Government” will ever stand up to anybody. Can you recall any of them ever doing so? I can’t, but I’m drunk at the moment.
Just like the Minister for the (Opposite to) Health has her buffers, they too will cull some poor scapegoat rather than take responsibility.
And anyway, I like Unions. I think they’re fuckin’ great, -and I’m on the dole!
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:08 am
No.
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:10 am
Why?
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:17 am
Was that you severing someone’s hand in that Finglas pub over the weekend, Twenty? So it turned out not to be Damien Rice after all, but what’s a man to do in a split-second situation like that? Lead with the sword, obviously.
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:26 am
How come we’ve arrived at a state in this country where everybody knows what’s wrong, everyone knows the solution, and the only thing Government intervention does is to complicate matters?
The Health Service, the Tribunal Fiasco, Transport, Communications, Drugs (lack of).
We need a revolution.
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:27 am
Yeah, I know but I am trying to be optimistic, pointless I know but it’s the only thing that will get me through this bleak mid winters Monday.
The government don’t have the balls, Harney is a fat heartless slob and the unions are all short term thinking, grab all bastards, fuck the real hardworking people, who are out to screw the country for as much as they can get while the going is good. [(I hate unions).(I especially hate Liam Doran, smarmy git he is.)]
This country stinks. Perhaps it’s time to buy a great big motorcycle or van and leave this country in the rearview mirror for a while/forever.
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:30 am
I’m not really the hand severing type, to be honest.
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:41 am
Ireland is fucked
if you are rich your ok
if you work for a living
if you are sick or old
you are well fucked it does not matter what you do. harney 8 belly’s and co
are going to fuck us. fucking scum bags
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:52 am
yes yes this is all very well but there is a more important issue to sort out on this site. i am in work and i keep the net bit of my screen as a little rectangle down the bottom left. on any other site or blog this is fine as they have some magical paragraphy squashy rearranging dealie but on this site the fucking thing needs to be most of the width of my monitor in order to avoid the lines squeezing up all over themselves. sort it out. i fancy mary harney.
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:54 am
There’s not much light at the end of the tunnel, that’s for sure.
January 14th, 2008 @ 11:56 am
only a train coming the other way (erm, boom, boom)
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:07 pm
I have a brilliant idea. Why dont we look at a country that has a good health system and copy theirs?
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:15 pm
SuperGrover; Fuck off. Call customer support, or else just skip that and re-install Windows. (But you’re not allowed to do that in work, are you?) Just fuck off.
The best way to deal with a system that sucks is to take it from behind, and fuck the arse off it.
My heart goes out to all you poor eejits who complain, but still have to turn up at 9:00 on Monday mornings, and then spend your day taking it up the arse from THE MAN. It’s not your fault. Me, I was born in simpler times. I was 16 in ’77. Born to be a Punk. Still am A FUCKING PUNK. And VERY proud of it. Haven’t succumbed to working for the benefit of some other shitface cunt yet, and never will.
I imagine that most of you are reading this in work. Sad, sad, sad…..
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
we can copy fucking africa its better than this load of cunts
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:23 pm
Monkey Balls – relax, man. Don’t give a shite if you are a punk. What’s that got do do with anything? Are you Deco or one of his mates? The last bastions of Punk. Bless. My point was with the site format, not MS or Customer Service. Ah well, better get back to earning my punk-on-the-doss-and-proud-of-it-funding wages of enslavement. Clown
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
Try changing your resolution from 640×400 or whatever it’s at, Grover.
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
PS – hanging around the steps of Freebird in Grafton St., tapping money, and pretending to be poor was not an act of rebellion. Or anarchy. At least you had an excuse when you were 16. I still like punk music, and ska, and dub, etc. but long ago realised that this was just musical preference and not a way of sticking it to the man. Grow up. Sap.
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
Thanks Twenty, I’ll give it a go.
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
Hey Supergrover, I remember Deco! Would that be Deco Deachau?
Anyway, my point was that those who critisise the system most are usually the same people who prop the whole shambles up.
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
Just wanted a non-squashy screen. Not a fucking lecture. Anyway, peace out.
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:33 pm
Them bollixes in suits the Admin sack the fucking lot and it will free up many millions!
January 14th, 2008 @ 12:37 pm
Hey SuperGrover, check this;
It’s not “punk-on-the-doss-and-proud-of-it-funding”
It’s “punk-on-the-doss-and-proud-of-it-because-he-has-several-other-income-sourses-too-funding”
While you’re working, I’m wanking, and GETTING PAID FOR IT!
January 14th, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
Good man.
January 14th, 2008 @ 1:20 pm
Wealthy idle. Like Bertie Wooster. Living the punk ideal?
January 14th, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
I live a charmed life, I’ll admit, but it’s all of my own making. No silver spoon.
Took years of research, and trial and error.
If I was thick, I’d would’ve become a politician.
Boom, Boom!!
January 14th, 2008 @ 1:44 pm
Monkey Balls are you Glueastaen?
January 14th, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
I think everyone else has moved on to the Red Cow thread. Between me and you, MB, you should not rush to judge. Just because I have a PC in my job, you immediately conjur up images of a corporate slave who thinks that overtime and golf are cool. You are so wrong. Lie around generalising all you like, but you are coming across as the parody, not me. But I have enough perspective to know that you are probably not just the sad 2 dimensional caricature that you appear to be from this back and forth.
January 14th, 2008 @ 1:47 pm
PS – The Day the World turned Dayglo is currently a favourite. Getting repeated spins at home. That song just never gets dull for me
January 14th, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
Sorry SuperG.
As I said, I’ve been drinking. (yeah, yeah, I know!)
I don’t wanna fight. I’m just trying to put a perspective on things.
There seems to be a common belief that the “government” cares. The only thing this government ever cared about is how to screw the people harder. I, for one, refuse to bend over.
Now let’s go hassle the fuckers over at this Red Cow thing-a-me-bob.
January 14th, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
Peadar
No, I am not Gluasteáin. The four things I hate most are Cars, Television, Mobile ‘Phones and bad grammer.
To even suggest that I might call myself “Glaustáin” is an affront to my very being.You have upset me so much that my next drink will be a double.
I hope you’re sorry now.
January 14th, 2008 @ 3:10 pm
The four things I hate most are Cars, Television, Mobile ‘Phones and bad grammer.
Is number 5 bad spelling?
January 14th, 2008 @ 3:22 pm
No, I love bad speling.
January 14th, 2008 @ 3:29 pm
Totel anarky, dat’s wot I wont!
January 14th, 2008 @ 8:40 pm
Jesus wept. I’m going back to the boat to fish and drink and sleep some more.
January 15th, 2008 @ 12:31 am
surely the cure would be to stack the trolleys with patients with MRSA, winter vomiting bug and other messy infections inside the HSE’s offices. That way the HSE is helping out.
January 16th, 2008 @ 11:58 am
Does anyone know if the rumour about the current Flu virus having a micro micro microchip on board is true or urban myth ?
….five six seven eight, open up the Pearly Gates….