A plan to amalgamate the services of three maternity hospitals in Cork into one new unit later this month may have to be postponed unless agreement can be reached quickly on staffing levels.
An emergency meeting of obstetricians and neonatologists will be held tonight to discuss difficulties which have arisen over the move, due to take place on March 24th. They will look at whether the move should be put off for a short period and issue advice to the Health Service Executive (HSE) following their meeting.
The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) has been highlighting for weeks its concerns over the number of midwife posts approved for the new €75 million Cork University Maternity Hospital. The new hospital is on the campus of Cork University Hospital.
Patsy Doyle, the INO's industrial relations officer in the area, said an independent international expert in midwifery had said the new unit should have 383 trained midwife posts but the HSE was only proposing 304 posts.
She added that the 383 figure was recommended for dealing with 7,000 births a year, while the three hospitals to be merged were currently dealing with over 8,000 births annually.
There are, she added, about 250 midwives available from the three hospitals which are due to amalgamate: the Erinville, St Finbarr's and the Bons Secours maternity hospitals.
And to date nurses at the Bons Secours Hospital have not been signed up for rosters in the new hospital.
The dispute over staffing of the new hospital was referred to the Labour Relations Commission and after two hearings which failed to resolve the differences between the sides, the matter has now been referred to the Labour Court.
Obstetricians are now worried the dispute will not be resolved in time. Prof John Higgins, chairman of the division of obstetrics, gynaecology and neonatology at Cork University Maternity Hospital, has called an emergency meeting for tonight "to reflect on fundamental safety concerns for mothers and babies around the proposed closure of the three maternity hospitals in Cork" and the transfer of services to and the opening of the new hospital.
"The issue for us which I suppose is at the top of our list of concerns is that we don't yet know from a clinical point of view what staff will be available to us to work in that new hospital when it opens," he said.
"Our concern is that this isn't like opening a hotel, we can't make a mistake . . . we need to be sure that we can guarantee safety and what would underpin that of course is for us to know that we actually have the staff levels that have been allocated to open the hospital," he added.
The obvious thing to do if the issues weren't resolved in time would be to continue to provide service in the three current units, he said.
Ms Doyle said the INO position was that unless safe staffing levels were agreed for the new facility, its nurses would not be transferring to it.
The HSE said in a statement last night it wished to reassure expectant mothers and their families that resources are adequate to safely open the new facility on March 24th. It insisted the HSE had significantly increased staffing for the new hospital.
"The HSE remains willing to have a prospective independent review of midwifery staffing levels carried out, once the new facility opens. It is in line with global best practice to conduct such studies once the new 'patient pathways' and midwifery workload can be identified in the new environment," it added.