Consultants and other hospital doctors show little interest in handling complaints about how they treat their patients, the Ombudsman told an Oireachtas committee yesterday.
Mr Kevin Murphy said medical record-keeping was atrocious in some cases. He alleged that medical records were sometimes not written up until an Ombudsman's investigation began. He also called for an examination of how the Department of Health and Children does its job and whether certain functions should be removed from it.
Mr Murphy was addressing the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Strategic Management Initiative, chaired by Mr Dick Roche (FF). The handling of complaints about the treatment of hospital patients was very much dependent on the goodwill and co-operation of medical staff in the health sector, Mr Murphy said.
"It has been my experience that health professionals, particularly doctors and consultants, do not engage wholeheartedly with patient complaints.
"Complaint-handling is invariably seen by medical staff as very much a matter for the administrators, even though the kernel of the complaint might well involve particular doctors or consultants". he said.
"In several recent complaints made to my office, I observed a marked reluctance on the part of the relevant consultant to engage in the complaint process."
His investigators were told that staff were under pressure in hospitals and notes had to be written later, but "sometimes it seems to me that notes are written only when the Ombudsman gets on to them".
He also complained about the frequency with which files disappeared when people changed from one doctor or hospital department to another. Referring to the Department of Health and Children, Mr Murphy said it "exhibits all the signs of a Department under pressure". It needed greater support from the centre if it was to develop its strategic role, he said.
The Department of Finance and the Department of the Taoiseach "have an important role to play in the process of supporting line Departments - such as the Department of Health and Children - in redefining and redeveloping their core competencies and in exploring why some or all of their existing functions and activities are currently undertaken and whether they might be more appropriately undertaken by other agencies," Mr Murphy said.
pomorain@irish-times.ie