I've tried the Dept of Health site and it's a nightmare - lots of tables and reports stored as PDFs & XLSs, all at leat 5 years old, all qualified in some way "acute hospitals only, excluding non-residents", or "no numbers available for 200X due to changes in tabulation methods" or "we are no longer responsible for those data, look elsewhere", anything to enable obfuscation.
Interestingly, I did find a report called "eHealth-Strategy-for-Ireland.pdf" which quotes this strategy's purpose as:-
"Bringing improved population wellbeing, health service efficiencies and economic opportunity through the use of technology enabled solutions"
the usual buzz-word stuff which could be prècised as "Saving money and improving health, using IT" which is only seven words long and saves time, money and printing costs.
Unfortunately this whole initiative sounds like PPARS all over again, just bigger, and has identified a dependency on a Deliverable from the Dept of Health the "Individual Health Identity Number" to be used instead of our existing PPSN. At least three other "strategic programmes" designed to replace the PPSN with this "IHIN" have failed but you can't criticise the determination, even if it is misplaced.
This document talks openly about the dismantling of the HSE, but gives no indications as to how many more mini-HSEs will replace it.
I deleted all the "fluff", blank pages and page-sized coloured photos leaving 67 A4 pages of "content" (see above 7-word strategy statement versus their 17). In those 67 pages, work design gets less than half a page, and I quote:
"4.5 Re-designing Work Practices
eHealth deployments by their very nature are disruptive and international experience has shown that their success can be measured by an organisation’s ability to adapt work practices and processes. eHealth needs to be viewed as a process reengineering activity facilitated through the use of information systems rather than a ’pure’ ICT project per se. The distinction here is important, because the decision to utilise eHealth solutions and the consequent planning and execution needs to be based on the recognition of a business need, the understanding and acceptance of any potential change management implications, the identification and provision of the required resources and the establishment of an authoritative governance and project management structure. In addition, the importance of stakeholder engagement and in particular clinical engagement is obvious in order to achieve a successful eHealth project in which full benefits are realised by all parties. Figure 4.2 outlines the key elements insuch an eHealth project.
The importance of process reorganisation and adaptation of work practices must be re-emphasised as failure to do so will result in
an even more confused and costly system than before. Hal Wolf of Kaiser Permanente in the USA (one of the earliest and most successful adapters of eHealth technologies) summarises this as follows;
NT + OO = COO
New Technology + Old Organisation = Costly Old Organisation
Issues such as skills and training of staff therefore are as important as pure technical competency when it comes to integrating eHealth technologies and redesigning work practices and processes."
I think you can understand my scepticism
Hidden in all the flannel and fluff and stuff copied and pasted and quoted from other sources is this gem, this moment of insight around development and delivery:-
"3 Outsource the delivery entity
Outsourcing (through a tender process) of the entire eHealth delivery function to a third party with previous successful experience of implementation.
Pros:
» Decoupled from perceived public scepticism of the Health Services ability to deliver major eHealth initiatives."
No mention found yet of simple, up-to-date, un-massaged stats for A&E specifically but I'll continue looking.