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MORE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENTS at small hospitals will be forced to close if the HSE does not reverse its ban on agency doctors, a group of medics has warned.
The warning comes just one month after Roscommon Hospital’s emergency department was shut down amid a storm of protest.
The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM) has called for emergency departments to be excluded from the new hiring freeze, which is set to take effect from August 15. It said that currently almost a third of senior doctor posts in emergency departments are vacant, and 15 per cent of more junior SHO positions.
“Some smaller EDs [emergency departments] will either close or have restricted hours of opening” unless agency staff can be brought in as cover, the association said in a statement. At others, it added, “there will be unacceptably long delays in patients accessing care due to doctor shortages. The ultimate outcome of these scenarios will be to put patients at increased risk.”
The HSE is currently conducting a recruitment drive in India and Pakistan in the hope of filling vacancies. However, the IAEM said these doctors will not be eligible to work in smaller regional emergency departments, where there is no full-time supervision.
Hundreds of people turned out to protest last month over the closure of the emergency department at Roscommon Hospital. Two weeks ago, the HSE sent a letter to its regional directors highlighting a 32 per cent growth in spending on agency doctors in just five months and ordering their employment to cease from August 15.
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The HSE is hugely overstaffed with office workers. Sack two-thirds of them and hire more doctors and nurses. Problem solved
Agreed, the money saved from every middle & senior management screwup sacked, could pay for 2 or 3 additional nurses.
Unfortunately, as the saying goes, it’s easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to sack anyone in the Public Service…
That would make sense and how long is it since we have that with the H S E
Yes sack office workers & let doctors & nurses answer patients phonecalls, file reports & pull & prepare charts for clinics instead of attending to patients, great idea
Well said Darren. While it seems obvious that reform is needed in administration, the "sack them and hire more doctors and nurses" line is beyond stupidity.
The reality is, if we want a first class universal health care system for everyone then we have to pay for it through higher taxes.
Enough of this so called private health care system, the horror stories we hear are broadly endured by those without private health cover ( most likely can’t afford it) and the so-called "semi-private" class – those that pay extra to private insurance but end up receiving the same service as those that cannot afford to pay.
That said, upon receipt of treatment the service is top class. It’s just a case of, like so many other things, of getting those who can afford to pay more, to do so.
I was talking to a neighbour of mine who was involved in developing private hospitals. He told me that a survey on the public hospitals showed that 70% of expenditure went on administration. Anecdotal evidence from friends of mine working in these hospitals would seem to back this up. Throwing money at hospitals will not solve the problem if the root cause of inefficiency is not tackled first.
On that anecdotal evidence we should be closing private hospitals and opening more public hospitals.
If we keep one third of the HSE’s office staff it will still leave just 30,000 people to answer the phones, etc. I know that’s trimming things to the bone but times are hard.
Thats what we do anyway if the office staff actually dealt with all the phone calls, preparing charts etc we would have more time but they dont
Enda, is this true? Er….where are you going?
More closed hospital departments= more payments in the corrupt politicians bank account, so does that mean some of them are retiring soon????
With this, and the current reluctance to pay NCHD overtime, hospitals will be fairly dangerous places to be around soon.
(NCHD’s will be asked to take up the slack but when its so difficult to get paid for it very few will do it)
This has been going on for years … apart from the dismantling of the old regional Health Boards, there has been little by way of effective re-structuring of the HSE. Mary Harney sat on this portfolio for years as noone else wanted the poisoned chalice – now we simply can’t afford the annual overruns and need to reform the system. A complete overhaul is the only thing that will save our health service – unfortunately as seen with the recent Roscommon A&E debacle, the government have not outlined simply and clearly their plan for the Irish health system – people need to know the reasons why services are being changed, curtailed and streamlined and proper information (statistics, reports etc) used to back up the big decisions.
have your say