Madam, - Minister for Health Mary Harney suggested last week that one of the reasons why MRSA is out of control is that tax-paying patients with private health insurance are taking up rooms in public hospitals that could be used as isolation rooms.
This is disingenuous and simply untrue.
I work as the senior specialist registrar in orthopaedic trauma surgery in one of the largest academic hospitals in the State. Out of a total of 37 beds on our ward, seven are in rooms. All of these are currently occupied by patients in isolation because of infection. As it happens, only one of these patients has health insurance.
We have other patients in open wards, some with insurance, who also have infections, but unfortunately cannot be accommodated due to the lack of rooms, facilities, and nursing staff to look after them. This is another example of the under-funding, under-resourcing, and mismanagement bedevilling our health system.
The Minister's statement is another blatant attempt to place the woes and ills of patients firmly at the door of greedy consultants who, she claims, value private practice above patient interest and the common good. The medical and nursing unions have been telling us for a year now that there are not enough facilities or infrastructure for those currently working in the health service. The HSE wants to recruit 1,000 public-only consultants, at a cost of over €250 million, yet there is no money to provide facilities for them.
Forty nursing and medical staff have been let go in Sligo. Doctors in Mullingar have been told to cut day-care procedures, reduce return visits to clinics, and finish clinics by 5pm. In Clonmel, one theatre is to be shut and six beds lost. In Tullamore, doctors were told to cancel all elective work for the month of September, and that an orthopaedic operating theatre would be shut. In Ennis, there are plans to cut a cardiac clinic and a unit for elderly patients.
The HSE tells us these measures are not cutbacks, but efforts to realign activity levels. The Minister reassures us that patients "will not suffer". Who are they trying to fool? Will sick patients improve as a result? The time has come for the public and the media to heed the medical and nursing professionals who actually work in the health service, and are trained to deliver it, instead of listening to the endless hogwash typical of the HSE.
As for "suffering" for the current mess, those who should be made to suffer are the HSE and Department of Health bigwigs who created it in the first place. Heads should roll, starting with those at the top.
- Yours, etc,
TURLOUGH O'DONNELL, President, Irish Orthopaedic Trainees Association, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.