Three hospitals used all insourcing funds to pay consultants only

Three hospitals used funds provided for insourcing solely to pay consultants, despite the money being provided to cover all costs associated with the work, a nationwide review has found. Naas General Hospital, University Hospital Kerry (UHK), and St Michael’s in Dun Laoghaire made disclosures to the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) that they were operating outside of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for how funds provided for insourcing work should be used. Insourcing is an initiative which utilises spare capacity in public hospitals over and above core hospital activity, in order to get public patients treated faster. This typically involves…