Elderly Donegal patients forced to travel to Dublin for treatment

Hundreds of elderly patients in Co Donegal have to travel to hospitals in Dublin for treatment after the HSE outsourced their appointments to private hospitals in the capital.

The initiative is part of a wider drive to cut waiting lists, which has seen more than 21,000 patients nationally reassigned to private providers so that Minister for Health Leo Varadkar’s targets can be met.

The outsourcing of waiting lists from Letterkenny hospital to Dublin has angered local GPs, who say frail patients have been given as little as 24 hours’ notice of appointments hundreds of miles from their homes.

One GP said that more than a dozen of his patients had been forced to travel long distances at great personal expense to fulfil the appointments, although many of these were for routine tests that could be performed closer to home.

Six hours

“Can you imagine the uproar if people in Donnybrook who were in their 70s and 80s were told to travel up to six hours for an appointment in Donegal?” the GP said. “I can’t see it happening.”

The Saolta hospital group, which includes Letterkenny hospital, confirmed that the Co Donegal facility has had to outsource appointments in respiratory medicine, general medicine and orthopaedics to Dublin hospitals.

A spokesman said that where local hospitals did not have the capacity to see sufficient patients to meet the targets, patients were offered care at an alternative hospital in either the public or the private sector.

He said that “every effort was made to offer patients an appointment in the hospital as close as possible to their home”, but in some specialities the nearest available hospital was in a major urban centre “some distance away”.

Asked about the lack of notice given to patients, he said the notification period was determined by the process involved in clarifying the availability of local capacity, confirming availability in Dublin hospitals and contacting patients.

“In many cases it was necessary to review medical records to ensure that the patient was suitable for treatment in the other hospital before contacting the patient.”

He said Letterkenny hospital apologised for any stress caused to patients as a result of the period of notice.

Seventeen private health facilities in the Republic and Northern Ireland were selected following a tender process to take part in the current outsourcing initiative, which aims to treat 21 per cent of the current inpatient, outpatient and daycase lists.

The remaining patients on waiting lists are being treated in the public sector.

A further 12,400 patients were treated privately in an earlier outsourcing initiative last June.

Mr Varadkar had set a target that no patient should be waiting for more than 15 months for an appointment by the end of 2015.