Yesterday's High Court under taking to provide a public cancer patient with a bed in the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin next Monday does not create a new precedent, according to sources.
Such arrangements are increasingly used as the public system struggles to cope with bed shortages. There are about 28,000 people on waiting lists for hospital admission.
However, the case is unusual because the patient, Mrs Janette Byrne, went to the High Court when her treatment was again postponed because the Mater did not have a public bed.
It is understood that Mrs Byrne was one of five patients whose chemotherapy was postponed on Monday.
Beds were arranged for all five in the Mater Private from Tuesday. However, Mrs Byrne needed five days of continuous chemotherapy, and the Mater Private could not have provided this into the weekend.
The admission of emergency cases to surgical beds is behind the experience of patients in acute hospitals whose planned treatments are cancelled.
It is believed that three public beds became available in the Mater on Tuesday when the ERHA found convalescent places for their occupants, but were filled almost immediately with emergency cases.
The contracting of beds in private hospitals forms part of the ERHA's bed management plan for this year.
Reductions in waiting lists for adult and child heart patients have been achieved partly by sending patients to private hospitals here and, for children, in the United States.