The WTF thread

[sheepshagger]

Tallaght hospital letters typed in Philippines

TALLAGHT HOSPITAL has resorted to having correspondence typed up in the Philippines in order to speed up its service to patients.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) says the hospital supplements the work of its medical secretaries by using a private company which outsources the work of typing letters to “another country”.

It declined to tell Labour TD Robert Dowds where this work was being carried out, but patients have been told anecdotally by staff that it is the Philippines.

The Irish contract company encrypts the content of the correspondence and no patient identifiers are used, the HSE assured Mr Dowds earlier this month.

The Dublin Mid-West TD had asked Minister for Health James Reilly about the practice, but his parliamentary questions was referred for answer to the HSE.

It said Tallaght hospital uses medical secretaries to transcribe dictated reports and letters prepared by consultants and other staff. But in order to provide “quality and efficient turnaround time”, this work was supplemented by outside suppliers.

Last year, the hospital was mired in controversy when it emerged that almost 58,000 patient X-rays went unreported and more than 3,400 letters from GPs were not dealt with.

At the time, extra staff were brought in to deal with the backlog.

Mr Dowds said he found it odd that the hospital found it necessary to outsource the work to the Far East.

“You’d imagine important medical letters need to be typed up accurately and close to the source of the information. There would have to be worries over confidential information getting lost or being divulged.”

Tallaght appears to be the only Dublin hospital that currently outsources typing work abroad, though at least one other may be considering it, according to other information supplied to Mr Dowds by the HSE.

St James’s Hospital, James Connolly Hospital and Stewarts Hospital all said they do not outsource administrative tasks to foreign countries.

But St Vincent’s Hospital said that following the recent voluntary redundancy scheme in the health service, it was “exploring options” as to how best to maintain essential administrative services for patients.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/hea ... 99976.html

[Mackman15]

Tallaght hospital letters typed in Philippines

A very apt opener for what is sure to become an extremely popular (if not a little infuriating) thread.

[Oldschool]

Surely, if they do need this work to be farmed out (and I can think of a lot of good reasons why they would), there is a local entrepreneur who would be only too delighted to do the work.
Oops, I forgot about the minimum wage issue.

[Oldschool]

A great thread BTW.
The HSE is a load of balls.
All the talk is about delivering treatment.
There is a huge need for the admin side of the HSE to be totally overhauled.
That's where a lot of the waste is and from whence money could be freed up to deliver the treatment.
They don't seem to have a centralised, computerised, up to date records system.
It's all over the place. A few summer students and a couple of good HSE IT staff (They do exist BTW) could sort this out in a year.
The only downside, is that we'd get rid of another few thousand wasteful jobs.

[Hornet]

Tallaght hospital letters typed in Philippines

TALLAGHT HOSPITAL has resorted to having correspondence typed up in the Philippines in order to speed up its service to patients.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) says the hospital supplements the work of its medical secretaries by using a private company which outsources the work of typing letters to “another country”.

It declined to tell Labour TD Robert Dowds where this work was being carried out, but patients have been told anecdotally by staff that it is the Philippines.

The Irish contract company encrypts the content of the correspondence and no patient identifiers are used, the HSE assured Mr Dowds earlier this month.

The Dublin Mid-West TD had asked Minister for Health James Reilly about the practice, but his parliamentary questions was referred for answer to the HSE.

It said Tallaght hospital uses medical secretaries to transcribe dictated reports and letters prepared by consultants and other staff. But in order to provide “quality and efficient turnaround time”, this work was supplemented by outside suppliers.

Last year, the hospital was mired in controversy when it emerged that almost 58,000 patient X-rays went unreported and more than 3,400 letters from GPs were not dealt with.

At the time, extra staff were brought in to deal with the backlog.

Mr Dowds said he found it odd that the hospital found it necessary to outsource the work to the Far East.

“You’d imagine important medical letters need to be typed up accurately and close to the source of the information. There would have to be worries over confidential information getting lost or being divulged.”

Tallaght appears to be the only Dublin hospital that currently outsources typing work abroad, though at least one other may be considering it, according to other information supplied to Mr Dowds by the HSE.

St James’s Hospital, James Connolly Hospital and Stewarts Hospital all said they do not outsource administrative tasks to foreign countries.

But St Vincent’s Hospital said that following the recent voluntary redundancy scheme in the health service, it was “exploring options” as to how best to maintain essential administrative services for patients.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/hea ... 99976.html

Old news apparently. My better half tells me that she heard about this going on months ago.

[Slipper1]

Here's another one...

Tsvetelina Borislavova, a former minority shareholder in CIBank, the Bulgarian unit of Belgian banking group KBC, has paid 100 000 euro for the 49.99 per cent stake in Bulgarian-American Credit Bank (BACB), the businesswoman said in a statement to the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) and the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) on June 17 2011.

At the start of 2008, Allied Irish Bank (AIB) bought the stake from the Bulgarian-American Enterprise Fund for 216 million euro. On June 17, AIB sold 6 311 100 BACB shares to Borislavova's Clever Synergies Investment Fund (CSIF) in a pre-arranged deal, the statement said.

Full story here... The Sofia Post

[Darce]

216mil down to 100K....shocking

[simplythebest]

216mil down to 100K....shocking

Nah, it's not that bad, at all atall.
It was €100k for 49.9% stake, therefore it was only €216 million down to €200k.
Better than a lot of their other bets.

[Slipper1]

216mil down to 100K....shocking

Nah, it's not that bad, at all atall.
It was €100k for 49.9% stake, therefore it was only €216 million down to €200k.
Better than a lot of their other bets.

No they paid 216m for the 49.99%

[simplythebest]

Yup, saw that on the 9 o'clock news. Apologies.
It was slightly tongue in cheek tho.

[Donny B.]

Healy-Rae won TV show after thousands of calls from the Dáil: report

INDEPENDENT TD MICHAEL Healy-Rae won a celebrity television competition after winning over 3,500 votes that were generated from an Oireachtas phone in 2007, it has emerged.

In an exclusive in today’s Irish Daily Mail, Senan Molony reports that the then Kerry county councillor won the ‘Celebrities Go Wild’ competition in October 2007 with a total of 3,636 calls coming from inside Leinster House, from the phone of an elected member.

The taxpayer ended up paying the €2,639 bill for the premium line calls to the number that was needed to vote specifically for Healy-Rae whose father Jackie Healy-Rae was a member of the Dáil at the time. Neither of the two Kerrymen are able to explain the calls, the paper reports.

Beyond unbelieavable!

[Mackman15]

Healy-Rae won TV show after thousands of calls from the Dáil: report

INDEPENDENT TD MICHAEL Healy-Rae won a celebrity television competition after winning over 3,500 votes that were generated from an Oireachtas phone in 2007, it has emerged.

In an exclusive in today’s Irish Daily Mail, Senan Molony reports that the then Kerry county councillor won the ‘Celebrities Go Wild’ competition in October 2007 with a total of 3,636 calls coming from inside Leinster House, from the phone of an elected member.

The taxpayer ended up paying the €2,639 bill for the premium line calls to the number that was needed to vote specifically for Healy-Rae whose father Jackie Healy-Rae was a member of the Dáil at the time. Neither of the two Kerrymen are able to explain the calls, the paper reports.

Beyond unbelieavable!

Careful now, this is martyrdom territory.
With carry on like that he's sure to top the poll in four & half years time.
Nothing like the embittering of South Kerry people to guarantee Gombeen jnr’s successive re-election for the next twenty years.

Sure what did he do wrong, wasn't he off in the wilds and sure didn't it all go to chair-itee.

(Give me strenght. )

[ceemec]

The interviews this morning compounded the situation. MHR was asked if it was a misuse of tax payer money directly and refused to say so. Completely dodged it and just repeated his mantra of "I don't know anything about it and the money went to charity, I don't know anything about it and the money went to charity, I don't know...." to any question that was put to him. I think it was Chris Donoghue interviewing him on Newstalk. He was simply bemused and baffled at the answers he was receiving. Surely, it can't be too difficult to ascertain which phone was used to make these calls from?

[Broken Wing]

But why bother? Sure the money went to charity and he didn't ask for it to be spent and he had no involvment and la de dah de dah de go away and don't be bothering me with your waste of tax payers money when I have potholes to be filling and buses to Listowel to be organising.

When are we going to put the gun back into Irish politics?

[olaf the fat]

Here's another one...

Tsvetelina Borislavova, a former minority shareholder in CIBank, the Bulgarian unit of Belgian banking group KBC, has paid 100 000 euro for the 49.99 per cent stake in Bulgarian-American Credit Bank (BACB), the businesswoman said in a statement to the Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) and the Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) on June 17 2011.

At the start of 2008, Allied Irish Bank (AIB) bought the stake from the Bulgarian-American Enterprise Fund for 216 million euro. On June 17, AIB sold 6 311 100 BACB shares to Borislavova's Clever Synergies Investment Fund (CSIF) in a pre-arranged deal, the statement said.

Full story here... The Sofia Post

"At the start of 2008, Allied Irish Bank (AIB) bought the stake" thats the bit I have problems with. Interbank funding was frozen by then and only a few months later they had to go cap in hand to Brian Lenihan.

[Mauler]

Healy-Rae won TV show after thousands of calls from the Dáil: report

INDEPENDENT TD MICHAEL Healy-Rae won a celebrity television competition after winning over 3,500 votes that were generated from an Oireachtas phone in 2007, it has emerged.

In an exclusive in today’s Irish Daily Mail, Senan Molony reports that the then Kerry county councillor won the ‘Celebrities Go Wild’ competition in October 2007 with a total of 3,636 calls coming from inside Leinster House, from the phone of an elected member.

The taxpayer ended up paying the €2,639 bill for the premium line calls to the number that was needed to vote specifically for Healy-Rae whose father Jackie Healy-Rae was a member of the Dáil at the time. Neither of the two Kerrymen are able to explain the calls, the paper reports.

Beyond unbelieavable!

Kerry south TD Michael Healy-Rae said today he didn’t know if it was right or wrong that he won a celebrity TV show with 3,636 calls made from a phone in Leinster House.

The Independent representative said that he didn’t know who had made the calls as he was not there at the time.




“I didn’t ask for taxpayer’s money to be used. It’s not as if an individual took money for their own use. The money was for charity. It was not my responsibility,” he said.




The calls made to premium phone lines and costing a total of €2,639, were made from the phone of an elected member of the Oireachtas to the Celebrities Go Wild contest in October 2007.




All of the money raised went to People in Need and TDs and Senators are allowed to make calls free of charge so no rules were broken, according to the report of the incident in today’s Daily Mail.




Asked today if the money should be paid back, Mr Healy –Rae said today that he was not involved in making the calls and he didn’t know who was. “The calls came from Leinster House but nobody could say if they came from one phone, five phones or 25 phones,” he said.




His father, the former TD Jackie Healy-Rae said that he didn’t believe he had voted for his son from a Leinster House phone as he had a mobile phone.




“ There wouldn’t be a hope in the wide earthly world that I’d be in a position to make that number of calls. Not an outside hope in the world,” he said.




Independent TD Finian McGrath said today that we couldn’t have a situation where public money was being used for private purposes and said he would be raising the matter with his other Independent colleagues in the Dail today.




“I was shocked and appalled when I heard about it. We need a proper investigation into it,” he said.




It is understood that the number of calls was so great that an automatic dialling facility may have been used.




In the contest, celebrities including Michael Healy-Rae, the late Katy French, Michelle de Bruin, Daithi O Se, Alan O’Neill, Mickey Joe Harte and Victoria Mary Clarke, competed in a series of physical challenges in Connemara. The winner was voted for on 60c premium phone lines.




The show, which was broadcast on RTE, attracted 445,000 viewers nightly.




A statement from the Oireachtas confirmed that in 2007 a spike in calls to a 1513 number was brought to their attention by their telecoms service provider and as a result all calls to that number were blocked.


“In total 3,636 calls to 1513 717107 were made from the Oireachtas phone system. Each incurred a charge of 60cents, plus VAT, giving a total of €2,639. That charge was paid by the House of the OIreachtas Service in accordance with contractual obligations,” the statement said.




Celebrities Go Wild was RTE’s equivalent of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here where eight celebrities were left to their own devices in Connemara.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news ... 07312.html

Jesus Christ, what a cast assembled by the National Broadcaster, I'm so sorry that I missed that show back in '07 ... I wonder if cash strapped RTE might consider showing this as a re-run.

FFS, Irish Z Lister's ... Now, wheres my Wall?

[ceemec]

I notice JHR never denied actually making calls, just that he couldn't have made that number himself.

[Leinsterman]

When are we going to put the gun back into Irish politics?

You should be careful when you say something like that in front of a Kerry TD. One of them in particular might take you seriously.

Funny how the gombeen muck-savage wouldn't condemn the calls. He must know damn well that his old man arranged it and is expecting it to be all eventually revealed.
He can't be seen to condemn it because if/when the old man is revealed, then it would have looked poor if precious son had criticized his father in public.

They really are a vile family and sum up all that is wrong with our political system, standard of candidates and also the "smart electorate".


Mauler - Katie Price has already been up against a wall of sorts. She's brown bread.

[deco]

Mauler - Katie Price has already been up against a wall of sorts. She's brown bread.

You got my hopes up there for a second, but sadly not true:
http://www.nowmagazine.co.uk/celebrity- ... bye-bye/1/

[Leinsterman]

Ah yes! I meant Katie French. Ah well.....