Row could delay hospital opening

HEALTH Minister Mary Harney has intervened in a row over staffing levels which has threatened to scupper the opening of a new €75 million maternity hospital.

The minister has guaranteed that by next December, the number of midwives working at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) will reach 383, the number recommended by an international midwifery expert.

To date, failure to reach that figure has led to a face-off between the country’s largest nursing union, the Irish Nurses’ Organisation (INO) and the Health Service Executive (HSE). Funding is currently in place for a nursing/midwifery complement of 375.5 full-time positions including 304 midwives, 62 student midwives and seven-and-a-half nursery nurses. The INO has claimed anything less than 383 midwives will create an unsafe environment for patients when CUMH opens on March 24.

At a public meeting this week, INO spokeswoman Patsy Doyle accused the HSE of working to political deadlines rather than patient safety requirements.

“We are worried because there is a general election coming. Our concern is that the HSE is working to a political agenda rather than within patient safety parameters,” she said.

Ms Doyle also poured cold water on the minister’s guarantee that the recommended staffing levels would be reached by December, six months after the 144-bed hospital is scheduled to open.

“Our response to that is we’ll wait until December before we start working there,” she said.

The HSE has offered to have a prospective review of midwifery/nursing staffing levels carried out three months after the new facility opens in an effort to break the deadlock.

The INO has now moved the matter to Labour Relations Commission (LCR) where a conciliation conference will take place next Wednesday. INO midwives are also seeking a relocation allowance of between €4,000 and €5,000 to move to the new facility.

Other unions representing staff at the new hospital have accepted a previous Labour Court recommendation of a day’s additional leave.

However the INO said the relocation allowance was “bottom of the list” of concerns, and patient safety was paramount.

Professor John Higgins, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University College Cork and CUHM has accepted Minister Harney’s guarantee.

“This would mean that by year’s end staffing numbers would match exactly the levels sought by the unified maternity services in our staffing submission,” Prof Higgins said.

He also welcomed the minister’s support for 24-hour on site on-call consultant-provided maternity services.