Not a single hospital has been fined for failure to implement a policy that is supposed to reduce overcrowding in emergency departments — at a time when numbers on trolleys are at record levels.

HSE director general Tony O’Brien has claimed it will take until the summer to teach all doctors and nurses basic hand hygiene standards after yet another hospital dirt scandal.

More than 130 severely obese adults are on a waiting list for weight-loss surgery at a public hospital that can only do about 25 such procedures a year.

Hospitals are spending as little as €2 on meals for patients — half the price of a McDonald’s Happy Meal and a rate doctors and nutritionists claim risks failing those most in need.

Galway University Hospital and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda are the two worst performing hospitals in the country, according to a HSE survey.

THOUSANDS of demonstrators demanding a halt to the closure of key services at Roscommon Hospital descended on Leinster House yesterday.

ALMOST €14 million will be slashed off the budgets of 18 hospitals in 2010 as a result of inefficiencies last year.

PATIENTS are waiting up to 600 days to see a consultant at outpatient clinics in some hospitals around the country, according to the Health Service Executive performance information system HealthStat.

DOCTORS and nurses at St John’s Hospital in Limerick have been chosen by patients as the most caring in the country, a recent survey shows.

LIMERICK’S Mid-Western Maternity Hospital was last night named and shamed as the worst place in Ireland for patients’ meals.

ST JOHN’S in Limerick has been voted Ireland’s best hospital for “quality of care” by a health website.

Caroline O’Doherty reviews the National Cancer Control Strategy, which provides the opportunity to see whether specialist centres are the best means to survival.

BADLY managed hospitals where patients’ health is not improved by high treatment costs have been fined €7.5 million.

THE country’s only health board-funded weight management clinic cannot give appointments to 200 people awaiting treatment for obesity because of pressure on services.

HOSPITALS found guilty of bad management and keeping patients in beds too long have been hit with fines totalling €6.4 million.