We must stop viewing health as ‘a cost to be managed’ and instead understand it as ‘an investment to be made’
Dr Ronan Glynn: 'With one of the fastest growing and fastest ageing populations in Europe, we must start to think much longer-term.' Photograph Nick BradshawAs the political focus moves beyond the election campaign and into government formation and negotiation of a programme for that government, the focus in the, much of the healthcare debate focused on current challenges, including emergency department overcrowding, waiting lists and capacity issues.
Paul Mescal on Saturday Night Live review: Gladiator II star skewers America’s bizarre views about IrelandPut simply, the track that many health systems globally are on – including here in Ireland – is unsustainable. Solving this problem is highly complex, but at least part of the answer to this challenge must lie in reframing population health as a key driver for sustainable economic growth and prosperity.
Second, investment in a healthy population can foster innovation and drive a more dynamic and resilient economy. In the UK the impact of ill-health on the workforce is now at crisis levels, with an estimated 2.8 million people deemed “economically inactive” – not in a job or looking for one – because of long-term sickness. In Ireland, the cost of mental ill-health alone has been estimated at more than €11 billion annually.
Of course, the health system itself has a role to play in increasing access to care and improving efficiency, but that challenge is shaped by the environment in which care is delivered. Even then, we cannot hope to build our way out of the capacity issues we face. For Ireland to achieve EU27 average bed occupancy of 4.7 beds per 1,000 population, we would need to increase our stock to more than 24,000 beds from the 15,000 we have today.
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