DOCTORS AT a large Dublin hospital have been told to cut activity levels this year back to 2006 levels, such is the pressure on budgets.
The annual conference of the Irish Medical Organisation was told at the weekend that staff at Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown were warned at the beginning of the year that "the budget was in trouble" and that service levels would have to be cut to those of two years ago, even though extra staff had been taken on to see more patients in the meantime.
Dr Trevor Duffy, a consultant rheumatologist at the hospital, told delegates the hospital had seen a doubling of its consultant physician numbers towards the end of 2006.
"So basically that staffing increase has now almost become redundant," he said, while at the same time the National Treatment Purchase Fund would be buying private care for those who couldn't be seen as a result of the cuts and ended up on waiting lists.
Cuts at a number of other hospitals were also highlighted. Dr Larry Fullam, a GP in Portarlington, Co Laois, told the conference that orthopaedic surgeons in Tullamore General Hospital were now only allowed to do one major operation a week.
"This is Alice in Wonderland stuff. It should be printed all over the blooming papers in the comic section," he added.
Furthermore he claimed at a recent meeting in Portlaoise General Hospital the only service plan they could produce to guide activity this year was one from 2006.
Dr Christine O'Malley, a geriatrician at Nenagh General Hospital, said staff had been told the hospital was 14 per cent over budget in 2007 and therefore had to lower its patient care targets for 2008. She proposed a motion demanding that Health Service Executive (HSE) service plan targets for acute hospitals be based on a realistic assessment of the likely number of patients who would require treatment rather than on the basis of budgets. It was passed unanimously.
A number of doctors at the conference criticised the Government's plan to confine major cancer treatment to just eight centres across the State. They called on the HSE to undertake a comprehensive patient impact assessment of the plan before changes are implemented. Dr Gerry Crotty, a consultant haematologist at Tullamore General Hospital, described the plan as it currently exists as "half-baked" and "extremely poorly thought out".
He said it was often pointed out that in Northern Ireland there was one cancer centre at Belfast City Hospital. This was true but there were also four cancer units at four other hospitals in the region where diagnosis and treatment could take place.
But in the Republic this would be confined to eight centres. He argued that the Republic could cope with fewer than eight major cancer centres if it also had a number of subsidiary cancer units like in the North.It was simply impossible for the changes to take place as planned without being properly resourced, he said.
Dr Cillian Twomey, a geriatrician in Cork, said nothing could happen in terms of implementing the plan without local agreement. He also criticised the term "centres of excellence" and said it implied that services in a whole range of other places were not up to scratch.