HSE paying to use private Beacon facilities

THE Health Service Executive (HSE) has been paying for the use of cancer facilities at the private Beacon Hospital in south Dublin after a key piece of equipment at a public hospital in the capital broke down.

Patients due to receive radiotherapy were re-routed to the Beacon in recent weeks while the linear accelerator machine at the Mater Hospital was out of order. The Beacon has also treated patients with a range of medical conditions from Beaumont Hospital in the city after that hospital became swamped with cases that were building into a backlog.

This is in addition to the public patients from various parts of the country who have been referred to the Beacon under the National Treatment Purchase Fund, chiefly for orthopaedic surgery and ENT (ear, nose and throat) procedures.