Madam, - Just one week after the announcement of the HSE's plans to close all the surgical inpatient beds in Roscommon County Hospital, we learned from The Irish Times that nearly 22,000 operations had to be cancelled in the past year because of lack of surgical inpatient beds throughout the country.
The Minister for Health Mary Harney, Brendan Drumm and the HSE are like the Emperor Nero, fiddling while Rome burns, pausing only to make plans for the closure of more surgical beds in the middle of a surgical bed crisis. They say they want only one hospital for every three to four counties for acute admissions. One can only assume that they will be ordering three to four times the present number of trolleys for the A&E departments of the larger hospitals to accommodate the patients from the smaller hospitals when they close their beds. - Yours, etc,
Dr CHARLES BYRNE,
Consultant Psychiatrist,
Roscommon County Hospital,
Roscommon.