A SPECIALIST at South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel has said plans by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to remove acute services from his hospital would be “madness”.
A rally by the local hospital group against the expected changes in Clonmel is to take place in the town this afternoon.
Peter Murchan, consultant surgeon and a member of the hospital’s medical board, said full details of the reconfiguration of acute hospital services in the southeast would not be announced until next month, but already there were indications that decisions had been made which would see the downgrading of Clonmel hospital.
“We feel their decision is completely incorrect. It’s poorly thought out, and it defies all logic, and in my view it’s a form of medical apartheid,” he said.
He added that if acute services such as maternity and emergency care were removed the local community of 150,000 people would be left with “health services lite”.
Mr Murchan said he was not against reconfiguration and the hospital, which was almost entirely refurbished in recent years at a cost of €45 million, had already participated.
“This is the first time the HSE have tried to downgrade a much larger hospital.
“This is incomparable with the closures of some of the smaller units in the country which they had under-resourced for successive decades and which had never undergone the investment which a hospital like South Tipperary has.
“Why on earth would the HSE want to dismantle a large intermediate-sized hospital which works perfectly well?”
The other hospitals in the southeast considered for reconfiguration are St Luke’s in Kilkenny and Wexford General and Waterford Regional.
Mr Murchan said it was of some concern that “the alarm bells do not seem to be ringing to the same extent in Wexford and Kilkenny”, and he suspected this may be because the process would spare the other hospitals, which have a larger representation on the group drawing up the plans.
Dr Colm Quigley, a consultant at Wexford General Hospital, is leading the reconfiguration team. In a recent presentation to the HSE South Regional Forum he said hospital reconfiguration was necessary and inevitable “if we are to ensure that patients in Ireland receive the best and safest care in the most appropriate setting”.
He stressed the concept of reconfiguration was not about downgrading hospitals, rather it was about changing the roles of hospitals, something Mr Murchan describes as “utter nonsense”.
Dr Quigley also claimed Clonmel hospital had 3.5 emergency department attendances between midnight and 8am, compared to five in Kilkenny, 5.2 in Wexford and 14 in Waterford.