There are "big resource issues" in terms of extra staffing and beds which need to be addressed at Cavan General Hospital, the Medical Council has confirmed following its inspection of the troubled hospital earlier this week.
Its president, Dr John Hillery, said the conclusion had been reached after inspecting the hospital's facilities and meeting with the hospital's medical board, its junior doctors, senior nursing staff and administrators.
"We listened a lot and we understand there are big resource issues that need to be addressed in the short to medium term," he said.
But the council members who visited were reassured about patient safety at the hospital, he added.
Safety has been a concern since the death on February 1st of nine-year-old Frances Sheridan from Cootehill three weeks after an appendix operation at the hospital.
A post-mortem found she died from complications of recent surgery.
The child had been recuperating at home from her operation when, on January 30th, she experienced abdominal pain, and her GP sent her back to the hospital with a note for the surgical team on call. She was only seen by two junior doctors in the A&E unit, however, who believed she had nothing more than a stomach bug.
They sent her home, and 36 hours later she was dead. The surgical team never received the letter sent by her GP.
After reading the report the Medical Council expressed concern and said it would visit the hospital to inspect it. It wanted to establish if recommendations it made following a previous inspection of the hospital in 2001 had been implemented. These had recommended that clinicians be involved in management.
Asked if this had happened, Dr Hillery said: "There is movement on that." He added: "We were reassured by the commitment of all the staff, and there has been progress on our previous recommendations."
The hospital had appointed an A&E consultant as recommended, but the person appointed had recently left to take up another post, he said.
Dr Hillery said he would prepare a report on the visit for the September meeting of the Medical Council.