Clerical staff shortages at the Longford/ Westmeath General Hospital in Mullingar have been criticised by a consultant at the hospital who said letters he dictated to GPs were not being typed for up to three months.
Dr Sean Murphy, a consultant geriatrician, said this was not the way to run a safe service.
"When I dictate a letter it takes two to three months for it to go out to a GP. We can't operate on that basis. We have got to keep correspondence between ourselves and GPs in real time," he said.
Dr Murphy said much attention had been paid to medical and nursing staff shortages, but the shortage of secretarial staff was critical. A recent meeting at the hospital decided there should be no more than a two-week turn-around time between dictation of letters and dispatching them to GPs.
"That is the only way we can run a safe service and patient safety is the bottom line," he said.
He said that when a patient left hospital he or she was given a handwritten interim note for their GP. It could not be considered to be a detailed account of what went on in hospital and did not outline tests carried out or further plans for the patient. These details were taking up to three months to be sent out.
The consultant put a motion before the December meeting of the Midland Health Board calling for a strategy to deal with the staffing crisis "currently affecting all grades of medical and non-medical staffing in its hospitals". He was supported by several board members.
The health board's chief executive officer, Mr Denis Doherty, denied there was a staffing crisis in the area. "We don't have a difficulty recruiting permanent nurses or consultants," he said. However, he said insufficient numbers of physiotherapists and other paramedical staff were being trained.
Dr Murphy acknowledged there was no difficulty filling positions - the problem was there were not enough positions, he said, adding that staff were under pressure as a result. There were, for example, two staff nurses caring for up to 25 patients at night in one unit of Mullingar hospital.