http://www.irishexaminer.com/pport/web/Full_Story/did-sgByRTLajgR3osgdq-nXlDAyFE.asp
Came across this on the Irish Examiner Website this afternoon.
Seems that our Health Service can’t make use of the charges it levies on people in hospitals because of a totally absurd accounting rule in the Dept of Finance.
Basically, hospitals/health boards have to predict at the start of a year how much revenue they will get from sick people turning up and availing of chargeable services. They are then entitled to hold on to that money to plough back into services and service provision. If they underestimate, any excess has to be forwarded to the Dept of Finance. This year that amounts to just under EUR70,000,000.
To put this another way: A business that exceeds its forecast turnover/profit target for the year is required to hand over those funds to another agency at a time when the quality of product/service offering available is falling rapidly behind expectation. Would you run a business on that basis? Maybe that is why we can’t get a Chairperson for the Health Services Executive?
The grinding sound you hear is Adam Smith rotating merrily in his grave and the knocking sound is Karl Marx smacking his head of his tombstone in Highgate. The pitter-patter is the sound of sane people with experience running as far as they can from the HSE Executive Directorship.
Of course, if the health boards/hospitals over-estimate the number of sick people who will walk through their doors, chances are that some other budget is squeezed by the bean-counters in Finance to conform to some arcane and inappropriate model or perception that is held about the health of the Irish people.
To paraphrase Don King — “Only in Ireland”.
Suggestion: Perhaps part of the financial planning for Healthboards or the HSE should be an outline plan on how they would invest any excess in funds from non-central government sources as part of a structured plan. IE: a prioritised, costed list of projects that would be funded in the next fiscal year starting at the top of the list and working down it until the windfall slush fund was exhausted.
Any thoughts from other tax paying punters?
1 Comment
That’s standard practice across the service. If, for example the OPW were to turn a profit by renting out or selling off state assets they would need permission, negotiated in advance, from Finance to keep the cash. (And squander it on poorly planned decentralisation plans)
This is to prevent public service bodies trying to exploit the public for profit. And to ensure that the monopoly power of the department of finance over other department’s incomes isn’t threatened. But that last one isn’t official.