The number of consultants in public health medicine has reached 79, according to Department of Health data.
This figure is just below the 86 consultants targeted by the end of June 2024. A Department spokesperson said the remaining seven posts were “in train”.
The recruitment followed an agreement between the Department, the HSE, and the IMO in 2021 to reform public health service delivery, as recommended by the 2018 Crowe Horwath report.
The agreement led to the creation of the role of consultant in public health medicine for the first time and set out plans for 84 consultant posts.
HSE figures differed from those provided by the Department, suggesting that consultant numbers are in flux as recruitment continues.
A HSE spokeswoman told the Medical Independent (MI) there were 73 consultants in public health medicine in post. A further 10 positions were at various stages of the recruitment process.
In 2019, the total public health workforce amounted to about 250 whole-time equivalents (WTEs). The workforce has since doubled to around 500 WTEs, according to the Department.
This followed a commitment made by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly in 2020 to double the public health workforce via the pandemic workforce plan.
“Through this expansion, 242 additional WTE posts, including public health doctors, nurses, senior medical scientists, surveillance scientists, and support staff have now been recruited to public health in the HSE,” the Department spokesperson stated.
Planned enhancements to disease surveillance resulted in a further 62.5 WTE posts being added to the workforce in the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, hospital sites, and the National Virus Reference Laboratory.
Meanwhile, new electronic case management software for the management of notifiable infectious diseases will be introduced next year.
The Department’s spokesperson told MI that a tender was recently awarded to establish an outbreak case and incident management IT system (OCIMS) following a design and specifications process.
“The OCIMS will enable public health professionals to manage infectious disease cases, contacts, outbreaks, and incidents. The main objective of the OCIMS is to digitise the processes for better management of infectious diseases. The implementation of this OCIMS system will continue to develop and implement comprehensive, end-to-end health protection information systems, to support more efficient and robust surveillance, investigation, management and reporting of infectious disease cases, outbreaks, and incidents,” the spokesperson explained.
Phase one of the implementation of the OCIMS system is anticipated to occur in the first quarter of 2025, according to the HSE.
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