Hospital sends scans 30km to be interpreted

A HOSPITAL which has been unable to recruit a consultant radiologist to read CT scans has to send the specialised x-rays by taxi every day to a hospital 30km away where they are interpreted.

The arrangement between Mallow General Hospital (MGH) in north Cork and the Mercy University Hospital (MUH) in Cork city was put in place after the Health Service Executive (HSE) had spent more than €150,000 paying the Bon Secours private hospital to carry out scans on MGH patients between 2007 and 2009.

This included paying the Bon Secours almost €45,000 in 2009 to carry out 60 scans at a time when a €1.5 million CT scanner at MGH lay idle.