Too much ideology in Future Healthcare Report, says PHA

The Report of the Committee on the Future of Healthcare has missed an opportunity to provide for a public-private partnership that would make progress quickly for patients, according to the Private Hospitals Association (PHA). Simon Nugent, CEO of the PHA, said the Committee had spent too much time obsessed with publicly owned delivery systems rather than taking a holistic view of the overall health assets in the State. “The report is fixated on public hospitals and public health systems while a highly efficient private system is ignored even though it operates alongside it with a similar spread of services across the country,” Mr Nugent said, “The Committee appears to have got bogged down with ideology. It has put philosophy over practicality. It is disappointing that the Committee did not decide to partner the public and private systems of healthcare for patients to make real progress quickly for those