No plan to publish intensive care report

THE HSE says there are no immediate plans to publish a report calling for 100 additional intensive care unit beds.

Despite the review of adult critical care services in all 37 acute hospitals in January 2008, it has not been forwarded to Health Minister Mary Harney or the HSE Board. The document, drawn up by consultancy firm Prospectus, is understood to detail a series of critical care service reforms over the next decade, including:

nOne hundred new intensive care beds.

nAll critical care units at tertiary hospitals to be led by specialist consultants.

nIntensive care services to be centralised and regionalised.

nA percentage of intensive care beds at small hospitals to be transferred to larger facilities.

The report — which is likely to lead to significant expense for the HSE at a time when the system is in a financial crisis — is based on site visits to all 52 adult intensive care units across the country.

These visits, during May and June last year, were followed up by consultation, with staff and hospital-specific reports provided to hospitals last August.

However, despite the report being concluded and sent to the steering committee examining the recommendations at the start of this year, it has yet to be forwarded to the HSE management team, HSE Board, or the Minister for Health.

A spokesperson for the HSE said while the review had been completed by the consultancy firm and was submitted to the steering committee in January, there is still “no date” for when it will be made public.

“The review was limited to adult critical care services including national specialist services and did not include neonatal/paediatric requirements, and covered all 52 units across 37 acute hospital sites and included a month-long national audit of activity. The final draft of the report was submitted to HSE Steering Group in January 2009.

“The final report has not yet been presented to the HSE Management Team, HSE Board or Minister and we do not have an indicative publication date at this stage,” the spokesperson said.