Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Doctor X takes on flawed (Irish) system

Doctor X takes on flawed system:

"He told ‘Morning Ireland’ that the two biggest problems in Ireland were lack of accountability in the Health Service Executive, and the two-tiered system of private and public health. “Consultants hold all the power in the Irish system, and that is one of the main problems,” he said. The Bitter Pill devotes a chapter to his criticisms of the two-tier system. “In order that a private health service can justify its existence, it is necessary that it offers a better service than the public health service. It follows, then, that the public service is below-par and therefore unable to deliver best practice,” he writes. Among the many flaws he describes is the fact that consultants are often not in a hospital when one of their patients is ready for discharge, because they are at their private clinics. This can mean that a patient who is ready to leave must stay in hospital, sometimes over a weekend, with all the attendant costs on the system and the ‘blocking of the bed’ for the next sick person."

His book is The Bitter Pill: An Insider’s Shocking Expose of the Irish Health System.

There is another book, Emergency Irish Hospitals In Chaos - Author Marie O Connor , and I'm trying to find out more about it. Here's something.

In any case, just trying to gather information about what we want in a healthcare system and what we want to avoid.

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