Good management starts at the top, Leo

IT is more than a little disingenuous for Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to say that the current trolley crisis is the consequence of mismanagement in our hospitals, rather than a lack of resources or insufficient staffing levels.

Mr Varadkar pointed out yesterday that overcrowding has been significantly reduced at Dublin hospitals Beaumont, St James’s, St Vincent’s and James Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, as well as at regional hospitals such as Cavan General.

Naturally, that is good news and no doubt very welcome for anyone who finds him or herself admitted to those hospitals. However, it is early days yet in what is always the busiest season for hospitals and the annual flu outbreak has not yet hit. All it will take is a serious outbreak to play havoc with those trolley numbers.

There is a plan in place to deal with any such squeeze on the system so, up to a point, Mr Varadkar is correct. Good management, and strategic cancellations of elective surgeries, may indeed lead to fewer patients on trolleys, but there are still far too many. The Taoiseach highlighted the success stories yesterday, but nonetheless there were 9,000 people on trolleys in October, a 15% increase on the figure for the same month last year.

That suggests that poor bed management is only part of the problem, and there clearly are hospitals where staffing and resources actually are an issue.

Mr Varadkar’s message seems to be that the Government has given the hospitals the money they need and it now is up to managers to deal with any issues. But if he insists on taking managers to task, let’s not forget that the HSE and the Department of Health themselves are subject to management; you would think a former Minister for Health would know this.

So while the Taoiseach may indeed be correct in his analysis, he should remember that good management begins at the very top, and that means the current minister, Simon Harris, and Mr Varadkar himself. That is where the buck stops, and if he truly believes that mismanagement in the main issue, then he should move to clear out the deadwood.