Universal healthcare system mooted as expert group established to review health funding

A radical change to the method of funding the health service was announced by Minister Mary Harney today — an initiative that will have huge implications for doctors, patients and all healthcare professionals.
The move could herald the introduction of a universal healthcare system and mean radical change in the way primary care, hospitals and chronic illness will be funded.

The establishment of an expert group on Resource Allocation and Financing in the health sector will address three issues that have bedevilled improvements in the health service for years, according to its chairwoman, Prof Frances Ruane of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
Those three issues are:

the lack of patient focus in funding — and the fact that funding does not ‘follow the patient’;

transparency and information — knowing who does what and when and how much it costs and;

the fact that there are limited resources to pay for health.

The new group will met on a monthly basis and report back to the Minister in April 2010. This time period is as short as conceivably possible, according to the chairwoman, and it is only possible to produce a report in this time because ‘a lot of work has already been done within the HSE’ she told a press conference today.
The expert group will examine how existing systems of resource allocation within the public health service can be improved to better support the aims of the health reform programmed. These aims are improved health status and outcomes, quality assurance and patient safety, speed and equity of access and sustainability.
This could mean the introduction of a universal healthcare system.
The Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney TD, said at the press conference today: “There’s nothing off the agenda, and there’s specifically on the agenda.” She said that while Germany had a social insurance system, Sweden had a tax-based system and other countries had a mixture of both, she wouldn’t rule anything in or out before the group reported back to her next year.
“I want to see greatly improved links between resources and patients’ interests. I want to make money follow the patient, that is, to support better each person’s health status and outcomes from healthcare.
The Minister also stressed the importance of funding chronic care and of treating more patients on a day case basis in hospitals.
She stated that the link between primary care and secondary care needed to be improved and that funding in some cases didn’t deliver the best result for the patient by because it aimed to deliver, for example, chronic disease services within the hospital setting when they might be more appropriately be delivered in the community.
The Minister added that the funding of the health service had to be reformed and that ‘we will not leave this report lying on a shelf’. The Minister also said she was ‘committed to the Consultant contract and the financial consequences of that’.