By Darragh McDonagh

Hospitals in the HSE West area have been shedding almost 45 patient beds a month so far this year as health service management attempts to cut budget expenditure by €65m by 2011.

And by now, more than one in ten acute hospital beds in the region that were in service at the end of 2009 currently remain closed as the HSE has reduced hospital capacity by 349 since the start of the year due to the unprecedented financial constraints.

Yet it emerged at a meeting of the Regional Health Forum Hospitals Committee this week that the HSE West has equally failed to collect a massive €10 million that it has been owed by private health insurers for a number of years.

Local health managers have been warned by the HSE that hospitals may face budgetary sanctions if they fail to improve on debt-collection rates from private health insurance companies, which could result in a further burden on HSE West coffers.

Health forum member Councillor Padraig Conneely said that the failure to collect the outstanding monies from insurance providers for several years was further evidence of mismanagement within the HSE and patients were now paying the price.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.