1. Dr Peadar Gilligan IMO President Consultant in Emergency Medicine
Getting Healthcare
Dr Peadar Gilligan
IMO President
Consultant in Emergency Medicine

2. Understanding healthcare in Ireland
Accessing healthcare in Ireland

3. Challenging environment
“Emergency departments have an extremely important function
and compromising the ability of the staff and units to perform it
by allowing them to be dangerously overcrowded is potentially
life threatening and absolutely unacceptable.”
Dr Peadar Gilligan, Consultant in
Emergency Medicine, Beaumont
Hospital, Letters to the Editor,
Irish Times, 26 February 2007
Health Service Executive
Acute Hospital Bed Capacity Review:
A Preferred Health System in Ireland to 2020
Detailed Report PA Consulting published 2007

4. Based on this calculation, Ireland requires 12,778 public patient beds to meet existing demand.
This is in comparison with an actual figure of 11,660. This is a short-fall of 1,118 beds.
Health Service Executive
Acute Hospital Bed Capacity Review:
A Preferred Health System in Ireland to 2020
Detailed Report PA Consulting published 2007

5. What actually happened?
Acute Hospital beds decreased by 13% from 12,110 in 2006 to 10,473 in 2015

7. Black hole

8. Angola

11. The Facts Life Expectancy in years at birth: Males 79.9 Females 83.6
% population 65 and over 2017: 13.6%
No. of people with a medical card end October 2017: 1,626,702
No. of people with a GP Visit Card end October 2017: 484,674
Total public health expenditure 2016: EUR14.7 billion
Number of births registered: 2016: 63,897
No. acute hospital discharges: 2016: 1.69 million
% as daycase 2016: 62%
WTEs employed in the health service end October 2017: 109,933

12. Euro Health Consumer Index ranks Irish health system 21st overall in 2016
Ireland worst of 36 countries for ease of access to healthcare

13. Persons reporting unmet healthcare needs

14. It’s alright when you are in

15. to increase the number of consultants to 3,100 by 2009 and to 3,600 by 2013.
Current data suggests 3153 Consultants in post
133 of these are not on the specialist register

16. The current system appears to be operating at or above capacity – acute bed occupancy, trolley waits and waiting lists point to an acute service under extreme pressure, while ED attendances, delays in hospital discharges, and growing waiting lists for HC indicate that both primary care services and community-based homecare services for older people are also under pressure.

17. The demand for healthcare is expected to grow significantly across the primary, acute and social care settings in the next 15 years as a result of demographic and non-demographic change.

18. CSO – “Population and Labour Force Projections, 2016- 2046”

19. If in patient bed occupancy is reduced to 85% when calculating capacity, then it is estimated that there would be the immediate need for an additional 1,260 beds, approximately, in the system to meet current demand.

20. Patient and Carer forum
“Supporting doctors and health professionals in their roles is a patient safety issue.”

21. “ Clarity is needed about what is reasonable to expect from the health service, what funding is to be allocated to meet those expectations, and what decisions need to be made to benefit the greatest number of people in a fair and transparent way. Central to this debate will be the issue of what society is prepared to invest in its health service.”

27. 2012 30% pay cut for all newly appointed Consultants
2008 Contract not honoured
Reversal of FEMPI cuts (GPs excluded to date)
Public Health Specialists not treated as Consultants
NCHDs poorly treated by employing hospitals
Potential further reduction in access to supplementary income and the impact this will have on recruitment