One of the most outspoken critics of the local health service was this week selected as the chairperson of the HSE West’s regional health forum at its meeting in Merlin Park Hospital.
Fine Gael councillor Padraig Conneely was the only nomination for the prestigious position on the organisation which replaced the health board system in January 2006. He replaced Ballinasloe county councillor Tomas Mannion.
The former mayor, who has been a forum member since its inception, was described as a “worthy” member of the health executive and a man of “great experience” and “talent” by his nominator, Limerick Fine Gael councillor Richard Butler. He predicted the city councillor would bring “order to the chair”.
Cllr Conneely has often crossed swords with health officials and forum members in the past and hit the headlines when he described University Hospital Galway’s emergency department as a “hellhole” and “chamber of horrors”. He walked out of a forum meeting in May in “protest” over comments made by a senior health official who said he was concerned about how public confidence in the health services was affected by the way in which public representatives portray these services in the media. Cllr Conneely asked was he referring to him and when told he was he said he took exception to this and was said he was leaving the meeting in protest.
Afterwards, he told this newspaper he had no regrets about walking out and refused to be “dictated to by senior highly paid executives of the HSE”. At the same meeting he claimed he was “ordered out” of UHG’s emergency department in April and told “not to go in there”. However, he vowed to continue visiting the facility in his role as a public representative and being the “voice of the voiceless”. “I’ll go in whether he likes it or not”.
Following his election he called for a “revolutionary” approach to the development of the health services.
“Our health service is broken. The quadrupling of the Irish health budget since 1997 has proved one thing - we have a poorly organised and managed health system which cannot be fixed by money alone.
“Ireland is spending close to the EU average on health on a per capita basis but Irish people are receiving a level of service well below the EU average - Ireland’s health service is ranked 15th in Europe for equality and 24th in terms of value for money. Our poor health system continues to affect every city, town and village in the region.”
He said his aim as chairperson was to abolish long-term waits on hospital trolleys in A&E, slash waiting lists and eliminate the “unfair and inefficient” public/private divide in hospitals.
“I also want to reform the primary care system to ensure that more patients are treated safely outside hospitals by their GPs. Primary care should be given the priority it deserves.
“We cannot be bound by ideology. We should apply best practice from other successful health systems. In Northern Ireland waiting list times were cut by 80 per cent from 2004 to 2008 without significantly increasing expenditure. We must look outside the box and take off our blinkers.”
Cllr Conneely said under the current system of fixed budgets each patient is seen as a “cost”.
“The system provides no incentives for efficiency or productivity. Health providers should be paid for how many patients they treat - patients should be a source of income rather than a ‘cost’. Money should follow the patient.”
