An editorial in the Irish Times on Monday (1st December) criticised a reported increase, of almost 11per cent, in the number of senior administrators working in acute hospitals operated by the Health Service Executive (HSE). The report was published on the paper’s front page last week.
Responding in the letters page yesterday (Thursday), national secretary Louise O’Donnell said that the number of senior managers constitutes just 1.1 per cent of the total number of staff employed in health services, and that the number of health service senior managers has remained at around the same level since 2007, while overall staff numbers have declined.
Louise wrote “It remains the most enduring myth of our health services that it is overburdened with clerical, administrative and management staff. Between 2009 and 2013, numbers of staff employed in these categories fell by more than any other, apart from “general support staff”.
IMPACT published a briefing paper in July this year - Health service clerical, administrative and management staffing levels - which reported that as few as 2% of all health service staff work in non-front line clerical, administrative and management roles.
Challenge
Louise said that a greater challenge for health services is “to ensure the crippling costs of agency staff are reversed, and that budgets can be used to employ more staff in areas where they are needed. This will increase the capacity of the service and, ultimately, improve the outcome for everyone who uses our health services.”
It was reported last week that the health service agency staff bill could reach €326m due to the rise in agency costs linked to the fall in the number of directly-employed staff in the health service. The HSE hopes to replace €140 million spent on agency staff with full-time employees. HSE boss Tony O'Brien is reported to have said that the new plan is "unrealistic."
Read Louise’s letter HERE.
