Gloster ‘shocked’ by claims of consultant misuse of waiting list system

By David Young, PA

The head of the HSE has expressed concern at claims a consultant misused the state’s waiting list system, resulting in delayed operations for sick children.

Bernard Gloster was responding to a report in The Sunday Times that a consultant breached HSE guidelines by referring patients he was seeing in his public practice to his weekend private clinics, rather than securing earlier treatment for them by referring them to HSE colleagues.

The newspaper said the consultant was paid thousands of euros through the state’s National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), which pays private practices to treat patients on public waiting lists.

According to the report, the details were uncovered by an internal investigation by Children’s Health Ireland (CHI).

Mr Gloster said if there was any evidence of misuse of public funds he would refer the matter to the gardai.

The HSE chief executive said he had been unaware of the CHI internal investigation.

“The content of it is absolutely shocking,” he told RTÉ’s This Week programme on Sunday.

“Secondly, I’m even more shocked because nobody has told me about it, and in the light of everything we were doing in the last number of months with CHI, I’m just quite shocked.

“And, in fairness to the new CEO (CHI chief executive Lucy Nugent), that’s not her fault – I’m not sure how much she has been told. I did speak to her briefly today.

“I believe a number of the issues around culture and other stuff that went on there were addressed, because the report was about more than that.

“But I want to be very clear, I’ve asked for a copy of the report myself, I have said to the CEO of CHI that I expect her and her board – other than or save for highly personal information – that that report should be published in the public interest.

“And I have made it clear that I reserve my position based on what I see in that report as to whether or not further questions arise and if any question arises, can I assure you, of anything connected with, or near connected with, alleged people ingratiating themselves financially in the public health system, the first step I’ll be taking is to refer that matter to the gardai.”