A major rally will be held in Monaghan on Wednesday night in opposition to plans to withdraw all acute inpatient services from the local hospital.
Hundreds of people are expected to turn out for the event, after which the local hospital action group will discuss a range of options to try to get the planned changes reversed. It may decide to field a candidate in the forthcoming general election.
The recommendation that all acute inpatient services at Monaghan General Hospital "be suspended as soon as is practically possible" came last week in the independent report into the death of Pat Joe Walsh. Mr Walsh (75) bled to death at the hospital last October when two other hospitals in the north east - Cavan and Drogheda - refused to accept his transfer from Monaghan hospital for emergency surgery on a bleeding ulcer.
Peadar McMahon of the Monaghan Community Hospital Alliance said yesterday anger was growing at the fact that Mr Walsh's death was being used to remove services from the hospital, when the report had said the care Mr Walsh actually received in the hospital before he died was "appropriate and beyond criticism".
The independent report said there was "virtually no disagreement that five significantly sized hospitals" in the north east was too many. It said Monaghan could be re-developed as a diagnostics and day care centre, with a nurse-led minor injuries unit and it "strongly recommended that it ceases to use the word hospital in its title".
Mr McMahon said people were worried about the loss of services. "We still can't get an answer as to how we will be guaranteed when we get heart attacks, strokes or whatever, that we will be treated within a reasonable time in a hospital setting."
The Health Service Executive stresses that similar recommendations were made in a report published earlier this year following a review of acute hospital services in the north east.
Dr Mary Hynes of the HSE's National Hospitals Office said on Thursday that evidence showed that for people in need of care for complex conditions and even for heart attacks, they should be treated in a hospital managing large volumes of such cases.
"We would be doing a disservice to the patients of Monaghan if we continued to provide that care there," she said.
Mr McMahon said however, that the Monaghan Hospital Community Alliance would do whatever it took to stop services for common conditions being withdrawn from the hospital.
"Since we have tried all other avenues to no avail, it appears that the only process left to us is to get involved in the political arena in some manner," he said. Whether that involves fielding a candidate in the general election or supporting a candidate that already plans to run has yet to be decided, he said.
The report into Mr Walsh's death criticised a number of doctors and has been referred by the HSE to the Medical Council. Its president Dr John Hillery said yesterday he would bring it to the next meeting of the council which takes place tomorrow.