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THE HSE HAS announced that it will not pay travel and subsistence expenses to staff this month or next, instead withholding the money until next year.
The decision has been condemned by the Minister for Health, James Reilly, who said he did not believe it was “good enough”. Unions have also reacted strongly against the move, saying many community and home help workers are dependent on petrol expenses.
Siptu official Paul Bell said the measure “can only be interpreted as health workers being instructed to bankroll the HSE.”
Minister Reilly said it was a decision that the HSE had taken without his involvement, and he did not approve of the move.
“I expect the HSE to stay within budget, but I expect them to pay their bills,” he told RTÉ Prime Time. “Staying in budget doesn’t mean you don’t pay people the money you owe them.”
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said the decision had been taken without any consultation with staff. “It is further confirmation that they [the HSE] simply do not understand the stresses community-based staff are under”, the union said in a statement.
In a statement, the HSE said the decision had been made “pending a resolution of the HSE’s final cash position for 2011″. It said the money would be deferred for around five weeks, or until the beginning of next year. The statement continued:
The HSE notes the comments of the Minister and will continue to engage with the Department of Finance and Department of Health in terms of managing its working capital and cash position to the end of the financial year.
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Am I missing something here or is Reilly not head of the HSE. Can he not make the payments instead of spouting on about how wrong it is
While you are thinking like an intelligent human being, the Heath Service in Ireland doesn’t work that way.
Having an unelected head of our health service who quasi answers to the health minister is the way we went.
Through no fault of my own I’m involved wth the Hse social services & out of a team of four all were out sick for past few weeks one has returned to work but has booked whole month of January off. It’s a total lack of leadership & total lack of motivation from the top down, but without any doubt in my mind there are a lot of lazy money grabbing bastards who sit at their desk scratching their arse waiting on their pension to come around.
The Bean Counters win this one. So order of Proirity in Health Service:
Bean Counter
Frontline Staff
Patient
It’s more like:
1. Bean counter
2. Generic, overpopulated ‘administration’ positions
3. Frontline Staff
4. Patient
60c of every 1euro to HSE gets stuck at 1. and 2…that makes sense how exactly???
AMurphy,
Thanks for improving on my model…
I met a very Senior Person in HSE a few years ago and it took as suprise when I told him the HSE is a customer (Consumer) service organisation. He thought about it and then agreed.
I then asked why the HSE was not set up like Customer Service Organisation? Using practices and technology from this industry… When he asked me to elaborate, I described how one a centralised system where all bodies are linked together (I work in this area for Customer service Organisations). I knew the game was up when I suggested a centralised PACS (Picture archiving and communication system) system for the country. He rubbished the is idea as close to insanity, “It would be too big. You know that these systems hold videos as well”.
So a Senior HSE IT professional told me YouTube was impossible.
@Jack I realise they’re just playing catch up but the system you described, a picture archiving system, is now being rolled out where I work, I can’t swear that this is nationwide but I’m told it is as your consultant in one hospital can view an X-Ray taken in another.
A senior HSE social worker I know once traveled to Nigeria to accompany a child, she had to buy her own tickets in advance and almost had to take them to court a year later to get her money back as it was quite a lot. If they can avoid it the HSE will draw anything like this out, one person told me they know a significant amount of people will just give up, as they have to keep applying and filling our forms, so doing it this way means a certain percentage gives up every time.
@Brain
The system I was actually proposing was using a CRM system for primary care which would need a central server (ideally) to locate PACS content. The way it was described to me is that the PACS systems rollout are deploy a seperate dabase to each hospital. While it would be possibel to access Xrays from other hospitals, from a computer architecture point of view this seems an inefficient.
What a cop out by O’Reilly. He’s the minister of health; if he doesn’t approve, he should instruct the HSE to pay up. Instead, like his predecessor, he’s chosen to hide behind intentionally well crafted bureaucracy.
If this happened in the company (private) that I work in, there would be absolute WAR if expenses were not paid out. There is no way that employees should be seriously out of pocket with regards to work expenses. It’s just not on!
So let me get this straight, staff have paid out money in order to do their job and their government employer is refusing to give them the money back because they can’t afford it, am I right?
So what happens if all HSE staff refuse to spend another penny of their own money and can’t then do their job? Would they be disciplined?
I also presume businesses can delay payment of taxes because they may not be able to afford them at this time.
What a shocking example of the mess this country is in!
Chicken ball Ann, this is the fourth news item I’ve read today and you have left a Ridiculous comment beneath all 4. You no more work in this area than I do! You sit at home getting a buzz from counting your thumbs up and down but have nothing of interest to add to these debates. Be honest would you.
Jesus but that is some stunt by the HSE.
basically this means I have given the HSE 150Euro this month in petrol costs. nice one
going to seriously impact on community public health, mental health nurses and nurses supporting students on clinical placement experience. we pay out in advance for our fuel and wait up to a month or more to be reimbursed. i think there will be voter backlash as soon as the opportunity allows. how can a community nurse refuse to respond to a client need. duty of care will mean they must and will respond. even at their own expense. Happy Christmas Mr. O’ Reilly you will be as popular as your predecessor. already you are looking under stress and strain with the job.
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