A chara, – Leo Varadkar will now spend the next few weeks being distracted by the media and politically misguided Opposition leaders firing a tirade of abuse at him for legacy issues.
Perhaps now might be the time for all the naysayers to start helping collectively with a view to sorting out the health service once and for all instead of playing the blame game. – Yours, etc,
JONATHAN WORMALD,
Sutton,
Dublin 13.
Sir, – Leo Varadkar wants consultants to do twice daily ward rounds, including at weekends. Such focus on inpatient care might lead to greater throughput of admissions and fewer patients on trolleys for a while but it would also mean fewer outpatient and day clinics, fewer procedures, less supervision, less teaching and training, less administrative input, less time for paperwork and audit, less communication with other aspects of the health service and less preventive medicine. Inevitably this would increase demand for emergency inpatient services while more broadly increasing the risk of adverse health outcomes. And when that risk is realised who will be to blame?
It is not the Minister’s fault, but many entrenched managers in the HSE view requests from staff for appropriate resourcing of patient care as hassle. Many do not see the provision of appropriate healthcare as their responsibility, rather they will exhaust all other possibilities before accepting that something might be their remit. I am familiar with a recent case of a young adult in which the primary problem was intellectual disability and it took 16 months, including eight in an acute hospital inpatient bed, for the disability services to accept her (they still haven’t actually seen her). So much time and effort is wasted, so much responsibility is avoided.
One gets a sense from the HSE that as long as some staff are in place it feels it is covered, even if there is gross understaffing or deficits in service provision. Many health professionals leave the country for better pay and conditions and the HSE does not attempt to keep them here but then bemoans the fact that positions cannot be filled and higher agency rates have to be paid. Those who make decisions on resources are too far removed from the patients these decisions affect. They should really have their own twice daily clinics for facetime with patients and staff alike. – Yours, etc,
DANIEL QUINN,
Killiney, Co Dublin.
Sir, – Is it not a fact that all the problems in the health services in this country have been signalled as far back as anyone can remember? It must have been a real kick in the teeth to those working at the coalface of this well-flagged disaster to listen to Leo Varadkar asking everyone working in the health services to put their shoulders to the wheel to solve this debacle, a debacle created by deliberate policy of Government since it came into office and the unmentionable government that came before it. This Government doesn’t care as long as the books are balanced and all social services will have to grin and bear it. The people don’t matter; it’s as simple as that. – Yours, etc,
KEVIN BYRNE,
Bantry,
Cork.
Sir, – So Minister for Health Leo Varadkar says that he predicted the overcrowding crisis ("Hospitals issue to be addressed, says Varadkar", January 8th). He called a meeting on December 23rd and then went on holiday! His first act on his return was to brief the media on his foresight, his ingenuity in getting another €3 million of taxpayers' funds and his posture of impatience with progress. If he and the Cabinet do not regard this as a cynical exercise in passing the buck then I fear for the future of the health service and the integrity of this Government. Meetings, announcements and media briefings are a poor substitute for action. We elect politicians to act, not to posture. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL ANDERSON,
Baldoyle,
Dublin 13.