Scandal of €6k weekly outlay on CT scans to end

A PUBLIC hospital which was paying €6,000 a week to a private hospital because its hi-tech scanner was lying idle will resume its own scanning next week.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) confirmed yesterday that, from next Monday, the €1.5 million CT scanner at Mallow General Hospital is due to resume procedures five days a week.

The scanner was commissioned at Mallow hospital in July 2008 and operated by a locum radiologist, pending the permanent filling of the post. Interviews for the post were held by the public appointments service (PAS) in November 2008 and two appointees were panelled.

The successful appointee was due to take up duty in July this year, but the PAS was informed at the end of May the appointee would not be taking up the post.

The second person on the panel was offered the post but also declined.

The vacancy is now being re-advertised. The HSE said every effort is being made to secure a locum, but there is “intense competition for locums... at this time”.

Locum radiologists attached to Mercy University Hospital in the city provided a service up to mid-June. But the difficulty in recruiting a full-time permanent specialist to operate the Mallow scanner forced hospital management to make interim arrangements.

From mid-June, the HSE said in order to ensure the clinical needs of the patients could still be met, it made arrangements for high-spec diagnostic scans to be provided by the Bon Secours private hospital in Cork city for those cases deemed clinically urgent.

“Patients were transferred by taxi or ambulance for their scans,” the HSE said.

“Scans cost approximately €600 each and an average of two scans were carried out Monday to Friday, up to July 24.” This resulted in an outlay of up €18,000.

Chairman of the Dáil’s public accounts committee, Fine Gael TD Bernard Allen, described it as “another example of services being wasted”.

He plans to quiz HSE officials on the matter when they appear before the committee in the autumn.

However, the HSE confirmed yesterday that new arrangements have been put in place since July 28 whereby Mallow Hospital inpatients have their CT scan performed at the hospital on three days per week.

The scans were then read by radiologists, attached to MUH, it said.

“From Monday next, it is hoped to resume CT scanning at the hospital on a five days a week basis.”

The CT scanner at Mallow has a chequered history.

It lay idle for more than a year before becoming fully operational last year following the appointment of specialist staff to operate it.