# Government to use private hospitals to treat non-Covid patients



## Brendan Burgess (4 May 2020)

I heard on the news that the Government is going to use the private hospitals to address the backlog in the treatment of public patients. 

If the HSE no longer needs the private hospitals for Covid, they should just hand them back to their owners.

Brendan


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## Baby boomer (4 May 2020)

Er, presumably they need them to cater for the patients displaced by the Covid takeover of regular hospitals.

However, this does leave health insurance customers somewhat shortchanged - even after a limited refund from the insurers.


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## Rosjohn (4 May 2020)

As the Private hospitals are in effect public till mid July time for the HSE to get cracking on those waiting lists.


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## browtal (10 May 2020)

I was 


Brendan Burgess said:


> I heard on the news that the Government is going to use the private hospitals to address the backlog in the treatment of public patients.
> 
> If the HSE no longer needs the private hospitals for Covid, they should just hand them back to their owners.
> 
> Brendan


As a private patient I was due to have back surgery
 The week following the lockdown, I am not happy to see public patients getting priority over me now.


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## Sunny (10 May 2020)

browtal said:


> I was
> 
> As a private patient I was due to have back surgery
> The week following the lockdown, I am not happy to see public patients getting priority over me now.



You mean a cancer patient or someone needing urgent cardio care??? Because that's the patients they are talking about. 

Using the logic here saying we should hand the private hospitals back, we might as well get back to normal because the threat is gone.


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## Rosjohn (10 May 2020)

The HSE's aim is now to keep all Hospitals at 80% capacity in case of a surge of Covid cases.
Sounds like the Private Hospitals will be public for more than the original 3 months.


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## trmartin (4 Jun 2020)

If a person gets a day care procedure done in private hospital during the period covered by the COVID-19 pandemic, is the cost borne by the public system or does the patient have to pay?


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