The "Mickey Mouse" health service available to the elderly and less well off was strongly criticised yesterday by a doctor at one of the State's leading hospitals.
Dr Garrett FitzGerald, a consultant physician at Waterford Regional Hospital, said patients were getting "inferior" treatment because the Department of Health refused to recognise the annual rise in acute medical cases at this time of year.
Infection control within hospitals had become "a nightmare" as patients were being moved around and placed in unsuitable wards, having had to queue for hours or days to get a bed.
"If you're 86 and in the sickest day of your life, you have to go through this absolute nightmare to get reasonably straightforward medical attention, and then they can't wait to get rid of you once you start turning the corner. You become the enemy," he said.
Medical patients were being placed in surgical wards, where the risk of infection was particularly serious. "Some surgical patients have wounds and if they get infected the consequences can be disastrous.
"The problem is that they took 21 per cent of the beds out of the system in 1987 and the health service has been in failure since then," he said.
Pressure on the system was increasing as the population was getting older, people were surviving diseases which would have been fatal in the past and the extent of family support was decreasing.
Hospitals became overcrowded every December and remained so until May, so for half the year they were not functioning properly. Yet there was no planning or budgetary provision made for this, he said.
As hospitals filled with medical patients, mainly elderly people with acute respiratory conditions, all other services suffered and patients due to have elective surgery had their operations cancelled. "There's a big outcry every January when it's at its worst and then the next thing you get is a waiting-list initiative.
"I'm drawing attention to this year after year . . . it's a simple question of recognising that this is the major problem in the Irish health service and you cannot solve all the other problems until you solve this one." The situation was entirely different, he said, in private hospitals. "It's basically a Mickey Mouse service for the less well-off guys and the old people."
Hospitals and health boards were powerless to address the issue as they were given a budget "and told exactly what to do with every penny". The real problem was a "stone wall" within the Departments of Health and Finance, which had the attitude: "If you give them more beds, they'll only fill them."
Dr FitzGerald stressed the issues he was raising were national, and not specifically related to Waterford Regional Hospital, which by yesterday had reached a lull in the current crisis. "We have about 40 or 50 extra medical patients, in addition to the 104 medical beds in the hospital. That constitutes a lull in our terms."
