Hospital consultants rail over antiquated equipment

Hospital equipment in use in some areas of the country is so obsolete that parts can only be secured from decommissioned machines in Japan, medical consultants have maintained.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) said on Thursday that hospital infrastructure was "beginning to crumble" after years of under-investment.

IHCA general secretary Martin Varley said the cumulative reduction in the State's hospital capital budget over the last decade or so was in the region of €1.7 billion.

“We are building up major problems in relation to insufficient infrastructure. I am not just talking about building new hospitals. There are plans to build new hospitals and that is all necessary. But the rest of the infrastructure has not been invested in across acute hospitals and mental health facilities.”

“We are seeing increased problems of obsolete equipment.We have equipment in hospitals that manufacturers will not stand over and where (manufacturers’ ) guarantees no long apply.”

Here in Sligo, for example, the only way parts could be secured for intervention radiology equipment was to obtain it from decommissioned machinery in Japan.

“We are actually using extremely old and obsolete equipment,which is not good,” he said.

The IHCA called for significant increases in funding for acute hospitals and mental health facilities in the budget for 2017.

Failing patients

IHCA president Tom Ryan said spending plans for frontline acute hospital and mental health services had been set at "completely unrealistic levels" in recent years and that this had resulted in a system that was failing patients.

Dr Ryan said the Government also had to address the “gaping capacity and equipment problems” by ensuring a substantial increase in funding for capital expenditure to reverse the cuts imposed over recent years.

The IHCA said, in particular, the budget for 2017 must include provision for an immediate increase in the number of acute, ICU and rehabilitation beds. It said these were required to treat patients within an acceptable time frame, to relieve emergency department overcrowding, to reduce bed occupancy levels to internationally-accepted norms and address the growing waiting lists.

It also said there should be an immediate increase in the availability of step- down care and other facilities to support timely discharge of patients from acute hospitals.

Retention crisis

The IHCA said there was an ongoing consultant recruitment and retention crisis which would have lasting effects if not addressed without delay.

The IHCA said, for example, that two thirds of all consultant psychiatry posts advertised last year were not filled.

It said overall that there were no applicants for one-in-four consultant positions advertised in 2015 and that a significant number of posts only had one applicant.

“There are now hundreds of approved consultant posts which cannot be filled on a permanent basis.

Dr Ryan said: "In reality Ireland is no longer internationally competitive in attracting highly-trained specialists in the numbers needed to treat a growing numbers of patients and to develop the public health system."