Health reform report author slammed for recommending performance-related pay

THE author of a major review of the Northern Ireland health service has called for performance-related pay for healthcare workers to produce better outcomes for patients.

Professor Rafael Bengoa, who authored a report in October 2016 which called for widespread reform of the health service here, said nurses and doctors should be financially rewarded if they produce better outcomes than their colleagues.

Mr Bengoa made the controversial comments to Radio Ulster’s Nolan Show yesterday — days after thousands of nurses took to picket lines to protest over pay and staffing levels, which unions claim are unsafe.

He said: “One needs to be thinking of a much more flexible system. This is not a privatisation, it is trying to make the public system much more flexible. We are all trying to do that with our different health services across Europe.

“The important thing is that one can identify how to measure different teams doing different work according to the results they are getting. You can measure results.

“I think the unions have to be thinking about this type of alternative and not try to standardise everyone on everything.”

Mr Bengoa said an example of this would be teams of nurses being financially rewarded if they reduce the number of patients having to be readmitted to hospital for complications after they have been discharged.

“If one is to consider putting more resources into the system, one has to think about how to use those resources in a new way, not necessarily use them in the traditional way,” he added.

Patrick Mulholland of Nipsa said Mr Bengoa’s proposals were “insulting” to health staff.

“Frankly, in the context of where we are today with industrial action in an heroic struggle, with health workers trying to defend staffing levels and improve them, it is insulting that Mr Bengoa would come off with comments like that,” he said.