Irish nurses, midwives, and doctors protest cuts to healthcare services

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Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.

HSE plan 'an austerity charter'

... The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) criticised the plan to cut health staff by a further 3,600 and the failure to learn the lessons of the Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal in the UK, which found that reaching targets became more important than patient care, leading to hundreds of avoidable patient deaths....

The INMO said it would now refer to the LRC its longstanding claim for the lifting of the nurse rectuitment ban.

"The Government's continued insistence on imposing severe cuts upon our public health service is inexplicable when the reality of the demands facing the service is apparent to everyone else, " INMO General Secretary Liam Doran said.

Meanwhile, the Irish Cancer Society has expressed concern that resources have not been made available in the HSE plan to extend the BreastCheck screening programmein 2014 to women aged 65 to 69 years, despite a commitment to do so in the Programme for Government....

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=23042

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Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.

HSE publishes long-delayed service plan for 2014

The HSE has said it plans to make €619m in cuts next year, down from an original projection of €666m.

Just €23m of the projected savings will derive from medical card 'probity review', far shy of the original figure of €133m floated at Budget time.

... Minister Howlin has said he will fund a once-off, targeted redundancy scheme aimed at administrators in the HSE....

... "I'm anxious where there is clearly too many administrators - if that is the case, if the HSE have identified and targeted people who are not required in the delivery of services and they propose to me a targeted voluntary redundancy scheme, I will fund it," he said.

The HSE says around 75,000 people will lose medical cards next year....

... It says a review of all medical cards currently in issue will result in around 25,000 people losing the cards they already hold.

Another 30,000 will be taken from older people who are now over the income limits for a full medical card....

... The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) meanwhile said it is deeply concerned about the impact on essential frontline services.

INMO General Secretary Liam Doran said neither his members, or patients, can tolerate more cuts.

"We have got from a place of a very comprehensive service down to one which is deeply uneven, deeply flawed," Mr Doran said.

"The IMNO gets contact every day from member saying they haven't enough staff, they can't meet patient need, they can't deliver the type of quality assured outcomes they want to..

... "And now you have a health service plan which is saying you've got to do even more with even less."...

Kildare Nationalist-HSE publishes long-delayed service plan for 2014 - Kildare Nationalist

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Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.

Over 800 frontline jobs axed in 10 months

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/over-800-frontline-jobs-axed-in-10-months-29821052.html

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