15-month wait for routine MRI scan
A father of a seven-year-old girl needing an MRI scan of her foot decided to pay €420 for the scan to be taken privately at CUH because he could not bear to see his daughter crying in pain as she waited to be treated as a public patient in the same hospital.
“When I telephoned the hospital before Christmas I was told there was a 14 to 15-month waiting time for an MRI scan. I rang back 10 minutes later and asked that my daughter be treated as a private patient and got a date for the following week,” said the father, who did not wished to be named to protect his daughter.
Fine Gael TD David Stanton, who made representations to the HSE on the father’s behalf, said it was appalling people were having to wait so long for an MRI at CUH. “The National Treatment Purchase Fund reduced the waiting list last year at the hospital. That implies that the list was a lot longer at that stage,” he said.
Hospital network manager of the Southern Hospitals Group Gerry O’Dwyer admitted to Mr Stanton the MRI waiting time at CUH needed to be addressed. Mr O’Dywer said CUH management were again in discussions with the purchase fund to become involved in another initiative to reduce the list: “In the interests of equity, those who have been longest waiting for a routine scan will be the first referred through the National Treatment Purchase Fund initiative.”
Meanwhile, the mayor of Mallow and spokesman for the Friends of Mallow Hospital Noel O’Connor said while interviews for two radiographers to operate the CT scanner had taken place three months ago they still did not know when the machine would be in use.
“We started campaigning in March last year to get the CT scanner working because it seemed ridiculous to us to leave the machine lying idle for so long. That was almost a year ago and we still have no start up date,” he said.
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