National Orthopaedic Hospital denies capacity issues

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly described the hospital as a 'broken system'. File picture: Damien Storan

The National Orthopaedic Hospital has said it has “no major capacity” issues and has rejected comments made in the Dáil about the hospital this week.

The hospital was described as a “broken system” by Health Minister Stephen Donnelly on Tuesday.

“The National Orthopaedic Hospital Cappagh welcomes the opportunity to clarify the facts as regards capacity, waiting times and operating theatres,” a hospital spokesman said on Friday.

During a private members motion on waiting lists, Mr Donnelly said he “went to” the hospital after a patient, facing a wait of over two years for hip treatment, contacted him “some time ago”.

He said: “The budget allocated for buying the titanium hips was gone. We were still paying all the overheads, but because of this broken system, Sarah and many other people were not being seen.” 

He said three of seven operating theatres were closed.

However, the hospital said: “The situation is not as described. The hospital has never held budgets that are specific to any particular type of medical or surgical product. NOHC would also like to point out that no patient has been denied surgery because the budget for any particular products or implants had been exhausted.” 

There are “five major operating theatres and one minor theatre” with typically five of the six in use.

The hospital does not comment on individual patients, but said: “We would like to assure patients and medical practitioners that there are no major capacity constraints at NOHC and, in fact, the hospital has the capacity to treat more patients than we are currently caring for”.

Waiting lists were reducing before the pandemic, and the hospital is back to this level again, with wait-times of “between six and nine months”, a spokesman said, adding “cancellations are rare”. 

'Critical constraints'

He acknowledged they face “critical constraints” to running six theatres full time, including: “lack of bed capacity, lack of high-dependence unit capacity”, shortages of anaesthetists and other staff.

A proposal, submitted to the HSE last year, for capital funding could potentially reduce waiting times to three months, the hospital estimates.

The Dáil also heard TD Michael Collins say patients are being sent from West Cork to Northern Ireland for hip and knee treatment.

The hospital spokesman said the NOHC was aware this also happens in Kerry.

“We would urge patients waiting for orthopaedic procedures to ask GPs to refer them to us,” he said.

The Dáil also heard TD Brian Stanley say: “Hospital managers must be running hospitals, not private consultants. That is what happened in Cappagh, if it was traced back to what went on.” 

“Any suggestion that the hospital is being impaired by consultants' private workload is not correct,” the spokesman said.

Mr Stanley said on Friday: "We need our hospitals staffed by consultants with Public Only contracts. Staff in the health services constantly complain to me that the private work of consultants need to be taken out of the public hospitals. We need to build a national public health system – something we have yet to achieve."