Vhi Healthcare welcomes HSE move on Hospital Bed Capacity Planning

January 25th, 2008 – Vhi Healthcare congratulates the HSE on its initiative to commission a detailed planning report on future hospital capacity requirements. The report reveals a wide variation in future bed requirements depending on the level of success of health policy initiatives. This underlines the importance of this type of planning exercise.

The detailed projection of bed capacity requirements is a move that Vhi Healthcare welcomes and is one we recommended more than six years ago when we proposed a joint public/private capacity planning project.
However at that time, we had to proceed with a private only bed capacity projection project.

According to Dr Bernadette Carr, Medical Director, Vhi Healthcare “Our experience in the private health market is interesting and underlines what can be achieved in just one area of health policy i.e. a concerted effort by us in conjunction with hospitals and consultants to move as many procedures as possible from an in-patient to a day-care setting.
We believe this is in the best medical and financial interest of patients generally and our members in particular.

She continued “Over a 10 year period from 1996 to 2006, the number of medical claims which we have paid on behalf of members increased by 87% to 550,560 (increasing membership, ageing population, technology advances etc) but the increase in in-patient claims was limited to 5.3% while there was a 205% increase in day care procedures over the same period.
Furthermore, the increase in the number of in-patient claims was offset by a 5% decrease in the average length of stay for in-patient cases.
We are working to ensure that this trend continues and we believe that considerable further progress can be made”

ENDS