Thursday, March 31st, 2011
An innovative mobile health clinic is taking to Dublin’s streets at night to treat homeless people. Meadhbh Monahan speakes to Dr Austin O’Carroll, who set up the service.
“What gives them hope is the fact that there are people interested in them,” says Dr Austin O’Carroll, an inner-city GP who has set up a mobile health clinic for Dublin’s increasing homeless population.
Treating rough sleepers on Thursdays and female sex workers on Wednesdays, the staff on the mobile clinic don’t often come across hope; instead it’s about survival.
“Providing health services is all...
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Thursday, March 31st, 2011
The new Government will be judged on how it implements its health commitments, particularly compulsory GP registration, Professor Andrew Murphy tells Meadhbh Monahan.
The ‘ecology’ of Irish health care cannot be measured accurately because “we don’t know who is registered with who.”
That’s according to Andrew Murphy, Foundation Chair of General Practice at NUI Galway. Murphy, who is also a GP in a semi-rural practice in Turloughmore, County Galway, says the Programme for Government’s commitment to make registration with a primary care team compulsory is “very welcome.”
The...
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Thursday, March 31st, 2011
Richard Layte explores how increasing the prescription of cardiovascular medicines led to a reduced mortality rate among older Irish people and how the early use of primary care prevents more serious illness later in life.
Life expectancy for older people in Ireland has been increasing steadily since the 1980s. Despite this, Irish life expectancies for the over sixty-fives lagged seriously behind the EU average as recently as the mid-1990s. But Irish death rates for the over sixty-fives dropped dramatically between 2000 and 2005, moving Ireland closer to the European average. Whereas...
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Thursday, March 31st, 2011
The insurance hike has helped to prompt a fundamental rethink about Ireland’s health system.
VHI’s market dominance is its main weakness. At the new year, the VHI had more than 200,000 customers aged over 60, including 129,000 customers over 70. While holding a share of around 60 per cent of customers aged over 60, it funds 82 per cent of privately insured care. Over half of its spending goes on older customers, who tend to be in poorer health.
The February hike in VHI premiums was widely seen as an attempt to get these customers off its books, pressing them to move to other insurers....
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Tags: Health
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Thursday, March 31st, 2011
A fresh row has broken out over the site for the proposed national children’s hospital and divisions are beginning to emerge at board level. Emma Blee writes.
While politicians and health professionals agree that a national children’s hospital is a necessity, arguments over its location are delaying progress.
Last October, the former Health Minister Mary Harney confirmed that controversial plans for a 440-bed national paediatric hospital to be built at the Mater site in Dublin would go ahead. At that time it was estimated that the project would cost €650 million and the state would...
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Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
Health policy analyst Sara Burke examines how health care will change under the new Fine Gael-Labour coalition.
In times of great cynicism with our political leaders, it’s hard to believe that politics matter. In these times of greater economic pessimism, it’s even harder to believe that politics can bring about a better society or even a better health system, particularly as our macro- economic and fiscal decisions are largely beyond our control.
However, it is inconvertible that the new Government that took up office on 9 March 2011 means that there is substantial change ahead...
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Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
eolas hears some of Ireland’s leading health professionals’ suggestions for health care reform.
A group of the health professionals has claimed that the present health care system suffers from fragmentation, inappropriate incentives, absence of efficiency drivers, planning system weaknesses, and practices such as the prescription charge, which lead to health care costs being higher than they should be.
Professor Frances Ruane, Chair of the ‘expert group report on resource allocation and financing in the health sector’ outlines the seven guiding principles for health care reform...
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Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
Nessa Childers MEP meets Meadhbh Monahan in the European Parliament to discuss her wide remit in Brussels and how decisions made now will affect future generations.
In a committee that deals with a broad range of topics, Nessa Childers acknowledges that “if you focus on everything there would be no time.”
The Labour woman was elected in June 2009 with 78,338 first preference votes and represents Ireland East which stretches from Offaly to Wexford. As well as being a full member of the Environment Committee (one of the largest committees in the Parliament), Childers is a substitute...
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Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
Scrutinising health brings a heavy workload and the committee is keen to see the sector reported fairly.
Health is rarely out of the headlines but the Chairman of its Oireachtas committee thinks that the full story is often not told.
“Something I would certainly be very conscious of is the fact that the press around health tends to focus predominately on the problems,” Seán Ó Fearghail remarks. “Motivating that organisation [the HSE] and keeping the morale of the health professionals high is quite difficult against the background of continuous negative publicity.”
A Fianna...
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Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
ESRI Director, Professor Frances Ruane, outlines the recommendations put to the Department of Health and Children for a complete reform of the health care system.
The Expert Group on Resource Allocation and Financing in the Health Sector, established by the Minister for Health and Children, released its report ‘Towards a better and sustainable health care system – resource allocation and financing issues for Ireland’ in July 2010. It was asked, based on an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the current resource allocation arrangements for health and personal social services:
•...
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