The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) and the Irish Nurses' Organisation (INO) yesterday jointly sought an immediate meeting of the high-level group established under Sustaining Progress to discuss the crisis at Peamount Hospital.
Both organisations said that management at Peamount Hospital had failed to engage in discussions on changes to service delivery.
The INO described the recent decision not to admit TB patients to the hospital as "significant workplace change".
The IMO president, Dr Joe Barry, expressed alarm at the decision by Peamount to intervene and refuse the admission of a highly infectious TB patient.
Sources at the Mater Hospital, where a man of east European origin with suspected multi-drug-resistant TB is being cared for, said he remained unwell but stable.
Doctors at the Mater had sought to have him transferred to the TB unit at Peamount earlier this week. Although the medical director and the senior medical officer there had accepted the patient, management at Peamount refused to admit the man.
The chief executive of Peamount, Mr Robin Mullan, said yesterday the hospital was not the national specialist referral centre for tuberculosis. "Peamount is not an acute hospital and has never had a Comhairle na n-Ospidéal- approved consultant post in respiratory medicine," he said.
"Only 30 of the hospital's 330 beds comprise its TB unit, and throughout 2003 it had a bed occupancy rate of 57 per cent. In Ireland today TB is mostly treated in acute hospitals, or in the community.
"Two Comhairle na nOspidéal reports on the hospital, in 2000 and 2003, stated that Peamount was not an appropriate location for TB patients as the 'optimal care of patients with tuberculosis belongs now in acute general hospitals'.
"These reports were supported by a risk management study undertaken by a firm of consultants on behalf of the hospital. Neither the board nor I can simply ignore this advice.
"Therefore Peamount is not an appropriate location to transfer a TB patient in need of acute treatment.
"Recently, the board of Peamount Hospital adopted a new strategy in consultation with our stakeholders, including the Eastern Regional Health Authority, our funding agency, to develop a range of services more in keeping with local community needs, providing a range of rehabilitation and continuing care services for older people and adults with neurological, pulmonary and intellectual disabilities," Mr Mullan said.
However, last night, experts in both infectious diseases and respiratory medicine claimed that the Department of Health has described Peamount as a national centre for the treatment of TB. Sources also pointed to Peamount's participation in the HIPE patient data collection system - which is confined to acute hospitals - as an indication that health planners regard it as an acute facility.