I want to draw the attention of the Members of the House to an article in the front of today’s Irish Examiner entitled, “HSE to restrict 20 most common surgeries”, which states that access to hip replacements and skin operations will be restricted. I would be insistent that the Leader would ask the Minister to clarify for us, preferably in this House, exactly what is this change in policy. Apparently, in the State which has the smallest number of surgeons per head of population of any country in the western world and where, as a result, waiting lists balloon, there has been an increased demand for operations of approximately 22% over recent years. If one thinks this one through for a second, the HSE will decrease the demand by instructing general practitioners not to refer patients for surgeries which the general practitioners think they may need. This is as bizarre an idea as I have ever heard. One bureaucracy of the State, the HSE, is engaging another bureaucracy of the State, HIQA, to assess the appropriateness of surgeries which are referred by a small number of general practitioners to a tiny number of consultants in the country which has the longest waiting lists in the western world. This is crazy economics and crazy medicine. It is administration gone mad.
The surgeries they are talking about include the removal of skin lesions. I would remind the Members of this House that Ireland has become one of the leading countries in the world for skin cancer and malignant melanoma. The number of cases and the number of deaths doubled between 1998 and 2008 and likely will increase further. When general practitioners look at a spot and wonder whether they should refer it to a surgeon to be removed, they now will have their hands stilled by the bureaucrats who are telling them not to do it. We really need urgent clarification on this.
