OVER 130 GPs have expressed concern that Mallow General Hospital is being downgraded by the HSE from an acute general hospital following the loss of a surgeon post last month which has resulted in reduced operating times at the hospital.
GPs from across north Cork joined with the Mallow Hospital Action Committee and the Friends of Mallow Hospital yesterday in calling for the restoration of the consultant surgeon following the decision by the HSE to reduce the number of surgeons from three to two.
Dr David Molony of Mallow said the loss of a consultant surgeon was a major blow to the hospital which currently serves a population of some 100,000 with GPs referring patients to Mallow from parts of Kerry, Tipperary, Limerick and Waterford as well as Cork.
Aonghus Twomey, a consultant surgeon at the hospital, has already warned HSE management that having just two consultant surgeons means it will "not be possible to deliver safe patient care . . . without full medical, surgical and anaesthetic cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week". Doctors described the loss of the third surgeon as "the final straw" that led to them supporting a motion of no confidence in HSE management of the hospital at a meeting on Monday and also expressed concern over the ongoing lack of CT scanning at the hospital.
A fellow Mallow GP, Dr Harry Casey, expressed serious concern at the HSE's failure for over a year to appoint a specialist radiographer to operate a new €1.5 million CT scanner which has being lying idle at the north Cork hospital.
Dr Casey said that while no figures were available for the cost, it made no sense economically to use an overstretched ambulance service to bring patients from Mallow to an already overstretched radiography department at Cork University Hospital while a new CT scanner lies idle in Mallow. The CUH radiography service manager, Angela McGovern, had written to hospital management in February to say that the radiography department at CUH will no longer be able to accept referrals for CT examinations for out patients from Mallow.
A retired consultant anaesthetist at the Mallow hospital, Dr Peter Thorpe, said that a colleague had calculated four years ago that it was costing €150,000 a year to transfer patients from Mallow to Cork for CT scans.
Cork East Labour TD Seán Sherlock said people believed there was "a deliberate campaign to wind down acute services at the hospital". The HSE strongly rejected suggestions it was trying to downgrade the hospital by stealth and said it recognised it provided a vital service for the region and, to that end, it had increased its budget for 2008 by 14 per cent to €17.231 million.
In a statement it said a third consultant was appointed on a temporary basis in 2004 and while it was not in a position to extend the appointment it remains committed to securing approval for the post on the basis of an arrangement with CUH.
