Simon Harris: Unacceptable how we got here in terms of waiting lists
Health Minister Simon Harris confirmed this was the case following a visit to Cork to hear firsthand from consultants at the maternity hospital why women face inordinate delays accessing treatment.
He said the new director “would be a very important voice in driving better outcomes in terms of waiting lists”.
Consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist Professor John Higgins, head of the college of medicine at University College Cork (UCC), is expected to take up the job next month.
Asked if he was planning a review of governance structures at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) where relations are poor between the current CEO, Tony McNamara and consultant staff, Mr Harris said the HSE would be appointing a new national clinical lead for its Women and Infants Programme — interviews for the post are taking place today — and this person “would be asked as one of their jobs to look at governance structures”.
“I’d like to ask them to review the governance structures in relation to all our maternity units where appropriate. Obviously some are very clear, the ones in Dublin I think are very effective and work very well,” said Mr Harris.
The minister said while co-location with an adult acute hospital is “a very desirable thing” (eg CUH/CUMH) “it needs to make sure that co-location doesn’t in any way hamper the ability of the maternity hospital to deliver services”.
“This (CUMH) is an incredible maternity hospital and I don’t want to suggest in any way that it’s not….but I think there is a legitimate piece about governance, there’s a legitimate piece about clinical independence and I think there’s a legitimate piece about how the arrangement here in Cork compares and indeed contrasts with arrangements in other maternity hospitals,” said Mr Harris.
In November, the Irish Examiner reported that almost the entire consultant cohort at CUMH had taken the unprecedented step of writing to Mr McNamara saying they were no longer prepared to take responsibility for the health of women on the waiting lists.
They said they had repeatedly highlighted underinvestment in the gynaecological services and that women waiting excessive times for treatment faced the possibility of delayed cancer diagnosis.
Yesterday Mr Harris said CUMH was “an outlier, to put it mildly, in terms of waiting list figures”.
“I want to know how we got here, because it’s not acceptable that we got here. Lots of elements of our health service have these challenges, we all went through a difficult challenging time, but no one else produced waiting lists like this.
“Secondly I want to know what can we do in the very short term to alleviate the situation— that may involve using some National Treatment Purchase Funds, it may involve prioritising this area through the HSE’s Waiting List Plan 2017. And the third piece I want to know is what are we going to do to make sure this never happens again.”
Mr Harris said the consultants had raised “important issues with me about governance and I take these very seriously”.
“These are people working on the frontline with responsibility for women’s health. They are people who have proven themselves to be powerful dedicated advocates for women and women’s health and I want to look at the issue of governance but I do want to do it in the context of the new Women and Infants Programme iin the HSE.”
Director of gynaecology services at CUMH, Dr Cathy Burke, said the meeting with the minister was positive and that he had agreed the solutions consultants put forward to tackle the waiting lists were good solutions.
These include additional theatre capacity, four additional consultant obstetrician/gynaecology posts, a gynaecology day unit and a gynaecology one-stop shop, with an overall cost in excess of €4m. She said the minister had committed to meeting them again in four to six weeks to “flesh out the details”.
In relation to governance of CUMH, Dr Burke said their wish was for separate governance (from CUH) with a ringfenced budget.
Asked how he felt the meeting went, Mr McNamara said: “We all made good points”.
CEO of the SSWHG, Gerry O’Dwyer said: “I thought it was a very positive meeting. A number of solutions are going to be looked at over the next 4-6 weeks.”
