Patients ‘extremely worried’ about standard of care

PATIENT groups at Tallaght Hospital said people are “extremely worried” about the quality of care there after the Health Service Executive confirmed that 3,500 referral letters from GPs were not opened by consultants, on top of the 58,000 X-rays that had not been read by radiologists.

The HSE rejected assertions from a GP that 30,000 referral letters were “lying in bags” around the hospital.

Vice-chairman of Tallaght Hospital Action Group, Richie O’Reilly, said that people were now querying whether consultants had been ignoring public referrals while following up requests from private patients.