More than 41,000 on waiting lists

THE crisis in the health service deepened last night with revelations that more than 41,000 patients are on waiting lists at a time when health service employers have banned staff recruitment.

The latest figures show nearly 12,000 adults are waiting six months or more and more than 2,200 children are waiting three months or more, despite a Government promise that by the end of 2003, no adult would wait longer than six months and no child longer than three months.

The number of patients waiting for day care treatment is 24,147, while 17,252 are waiting for an inpatient procedure.

Out of 32 hospitals, the longest waiting lists are at St Vincent’s and Beaumont in Dublin and University College Hospital in Galway (UCHG), where more than 2,500 patients are on waiting lists.

UCHG-based consultant radiologist David O’Keeffe, president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA), branded the figures “an absolute disgrace”.

“These patients will end up in A&E on a trolley as the condition for which they need treatment gets inexorably worse,” said Dr O’Keeffe. He said the number of patients on trolleys was triple that of a year ago.

At Galway’s Merlin Park Hospital, plans are afoot to close a 24-bed orthopaedic unit where patients are regularly treated under the National Treatment Purchase Fund, meaning a significant loss of revenue for the hospital. A 24-bed stroke rehabilitation unit, the only one of its kind in the west, is also due for closure, according to the IHCA. Consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Merlin Park Michael O’Sullivan described the closures as “the worst since the 80s”. “There has been nothing as severe as this, ever,” he told RTÉ news.

Irish Medical Organisation president Dr Paula Gilvarry said the figures again demonstrated the need to invest in public hospital beds.

A HSE spokesman said it was treating more patients than ever before and those on waiting lists constituted a mere 4% of those treated in Irish hospitals.

“Of the 41,000 cited as being on a waiting list, almost two-thirds are waiting less than three months for their procedure. For the most common procedures adults and children tend to wait two to five months, compared with two to five years before the advent of the National Treatment Purchase Fund in 2002,” a spokesman said.

This morning, health service unions meet to formulate a formal response to the HSE’s Monday announcement of an extension of its recruitment freeze for a second month. Several hospitals have closed beds and laid off staff. At Mayo General Hospital, 11 nurses, three radiographers, one physiotherapist and 17 clerical staff have not had contracts renewed. Next week, the Labour Relations Commission will hear the unions’ argument that the unilateral ban on recruitment is in breach of the partnership spirit of Towards 2016.