Mid-west health plan deemed ‘medical lunacy’

LABOUR yesterday condemned the Health Service Executive Teamwork master plan for acute hospital services in the mid-west as “medical lunacy”.

The plan will see all serious accident and surgical cases dealt with at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital, which will be the regions’s A&E centre.

The party’s health spokesperson on health, Jan O’Sullivan said: “I am impressed by the amount of detailed data that is analysed and agree that the kind of co-ordination within the region that is proposed should be implemented. But where is the money to pay for the plan?”

She pointed out that the final draft of the plan, completed in December 2007, had detailed costings amounting to €370 million.

However, she the draft copy they received over the weekend which was dated April 2008 had all these costings deleted.

She said: “They haven’t put capital cost figures into the report we have received — the report they consider to be the final report. I can only surmise why these figures which included extra funding a total of €370m for the regional in Limerick, St John’s in Limerick and Ennis and Nenagh general hospitals, that in the current climate they do not intend to put in that level of investment.”

Ms O’Sullivan said she fears that positive elements of the plan that would involve spending will not be implemented and that the HSE would concentrate instead on the cost-cutting elements.

“I think a lot of this plan is aspirational and that is our concern. If they are going to proceed with the reduction of provision [of funds] for Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s, particularly the A&E, then we would be opposed to them doing anything like that, without doing any of the other positive elements,” she said.

Senator Alan Kelly, Labour European parliament candidate for Munster, said the plan will bring thousands onto the streets in protest.

“This is a highly dangerous document that would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious,” he said. “What it boils down to is the fact that the HSE plans to take 50,000 patients a year from small hospitals and put them into beds and infrastructure that are never likely to be built. It amounts to medical lunacy. It is not just the report that is concerning, but the fact that the HSE are making a botched job of implementing this flawed report. The incompetence is mind-boggling.”

He warned of wide-scale street protests and said an urgent public debate must now get under way in the mid-west about the future hospitals in Nenagh, Ennis and St John’s.

He accused the HSE of using backdoor tactics and implementing the plan without engaging in any public debate.

“Whatever the future of Nenagh, Ennis, St John’s and the Mid-Western Regional Hospital, Teamwork is not the answer.” he said.