A shortage of beds at a Dublin maternity hospital has forced it to arrange overnight accommodation for some of its patients at a nearby hotel.
The Rotunda hospital began the initiative this week and it involves sending "low-risk patients" to rooms in Jurys Inn on Parnell Street, which is just metres from the hospital.
Dr Michael Geary, master of the hospital, said last night it would be preferable to accommodate the patients in the main hospital building but the hospital was short of beds.
Three beds had been block-booked for patients in the hotel and just two patients have used them so far, he confirmed.
"It's a commonsense approach," he said, adding that the initiative now being piloted was safe but would be reviewed daily.
He stressed that expectant women sent to the hotel were carefully selected and were consulted in advance. The women staying in the hotel could have their partner with them, he added.
The plan has the backing of the Health Service Executive.
However, the notion of accommodating patients in a hotel has come in for criticism from patients' groups, politicians and the Irish Nurses Organisation (INO). The INO is due to meet hospital management today to discuss the development.
Janette Byrne of Patients Together, who highlighted the issue, said: "I don't find it acceptable that this is the road to take to solve the bed shortage and overcrowding in our hospitals."
She added: "No matter what way the HSE or Department of Health try to spin it, I can't accept that patients will be cared for in a hotel room rather than in a hospital bed."
Her problem, she said, was not with the Rotunda but with the HSE and other authorities for not delivering more beds for maternity hospitals, given rising birth rates. There was a 16.5 per cent increase in births at the Rotunda in the first eight months of this year compared with the same period last year. There were more than 800 births in August alone. The rate of increase is largely due to the increase in the population of the north Dublin area.
Ms Byrne said she was concerned about what would happen to a woman if her condition changed while in Jurys Inn and there were no medics on site. She said one of the first patients accommodated in Jurys Inn was from Monaghan. Dr Geary said the women could call the hospital directly from their room if they had any problem. He said the women sent to the hotel were in the early stages of pregnancy but required daily tests or daily review or perhaps required intravenous antibiotics. There was no danger of any of them going into labour.
He said this model of care was not unusual in other countries. The HSE, in a statement, said it had implemented "a number of innovative short-term initiatives to ensure that maternity care is provided in the safest setting possible".
In the Rotunda these measures included providing hotel accommodation for low-risk expectant mothers. But it was also providing the hospital with 14 additional midwives which it is hoped will allow the hospital expand from next month its early transfer home programme for women after they have given birth.
Fine Gael's health spokesman Brian Hayes said the fact that patients had to stay in hotel rooms rather than a hospital was a sign that the Government's incompetent handling of the health services was beginning to endanger patients.
"We have heard reassurances from the Taoiseach in the last day about the strength of the Irish economy.
"In the context of that strength it is absolutely disgraceful to hear of pregnant women being forced into hotel rooms because of bed shortages in the Rotunda," he said.