Drumm: Tallaght scandal must not go unpunished

THE Head of the HSE, Professor Brendan Drumm has suggested that his organisation would benefit from an external review of its performance since its inception in 2005.

Responding to criticism of the HSE following the Tallaght Hospital x-ray and referral letter controversy, Professor Drumm said the time may have come to investigate the success of the HSE to date.

“Maybe it’s time for an independent agency to come in from the outside, independent of the HSE, the Department of Health, of Goverment, the political system and tell us has it made headway? And where it has, acknowledge it and where it hasn’t, like in terms of our interaction with voluntary agencies, then let us learn from that,” he said.

While Minister for Children, Barry Andrews last week denounced those “looking for a head on a plate”, Professor Drumm yesterday said whomever was responsible for the failure to open GP referral letters at Tallaght Hospital should be punished.

Professor Brendan Drumm said the revelation that 3,498 GP letters were not passed on to consultants created a potential for serious medical issues to be ignored. And he said, even in cases where the consequences were not life threatening, the discomfort to patients was unacceptable.

Professor Tom O’Dowd, a GP in Tallaght , first publicised the backlog suggesting 30,000 letters had been ignored. Tallaght Hospital however disputed his figures, but admitted it was working to review 3,498 unchecked referrals.

Prof Drumm said whoever sanctioned this practice should be held accountable.

“If somebody gave an instruction that letters were not to be opened coming in from general practitioners, like Professor O’Dowd and his colleagues, I would say not only is it unacceptable but it should be associated with serious consequences.”

He told RTÉ’s This Week programme the autonomy of voluntary hospitals remained a significant legal problem for the HSE.

Prof Drumm pointed out that the HSE would not have been able to initiate its independent inquiry into the failure of radiologists to read 57,000 x-rays unless Tallaght hospital had requested it.

However, he said it was not a question of getting every x-ray film pored over by radiologists. Instead, he said, given reduced resources, hospitals should work to insure potentially serious conditions are checked by the best qualified staff.

Both the main opposition parties have criticised Prof Drumm for attempting to wash his hands of the problems at Tallaght.

Fine Gael’s Dr JamesReilly said taxpayers were providing €200m a year tothe hospital and deserved a much greater level of accountability.

“Professor Drumm must now provide an account of the role played by the National Hospitals Office in the Tallaght scandal. This body is responsible for the strategic management of acute hospital services for the country.

“Its director reports directly to Professor Drumm, and is responsible for implementing the hospital section of the annual service plan. Yet the scandals concerning X-rays and referral letters went unnoticed and unaddressed,” he said.

The Labour Party’s health spokesman, Jan O’Sullivan, said the HSE could not disown the voluntary sector.

“His claim that as a voluntary hospital, what goes on in Tallaght is purely a matter for its own board of management, and that the HSE has no hand, act or part on running the facility, may be true in a very narrow legal sense, but in reality taxpayers in general and members of local communities in particular are perfectly entitled to expect high standards from a hospital that is funded predominantly from the public purse,” she said.