IMO claims HSE 'hates' doctors

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Doctors are being blamed for problems in the health service by government and HSE who “hate” them, incoming president of the Irish Medical Organisation has claimed.

The organisation’s AGM heard tense discussion of plans for “up to 10%” of health workers to work weekends from later this year with HSE ceo Bernard Gloster on Saturday afternoon.

Dr Anne Dee is taking over as president from this weekend.

Speaking directly to hospital consultants earlier on Saturday, she said: “You’re working in a system that is impossible, you’re being blamed for its failings and you’re easy targets in that regard I think.” She went on to say: “I can never understand and I think it is actually unique to Ireland why the government appears to hate doctors, and why the HSE appears to hate doctors, it just seems to be kind of sad.” She described consultants as “easy targets”.

She later clarified her comments were not directed at Mr Gloster, but insisted: “But I do feel strongly that there is an underlying hostility towards doctors on the part of many, many people in the HSE and the Department of Health.” Doctors warned opening up services on Saturdays and Sundays without increasing the workforce will mean closed clinics on Tuesdays for example.

Dr Peader Gilligan, on the IMO consultants committee, said staff are “fully-committed” to their patients.

“Pick a day of the week that you’re not going to turn up, you’d find it quite challenging to pick a day that wasn’t going to have a significant patient impact,” he said.

He added: “that’s exactly what we’re being asked to do. You’re now being asked within your contract ‘we want you to work Saturdays, we want 10 hours on Saturdays but you’re entitled to that time back’.” Dr Matthew Sadlier, head of the IMO consultants’ committee, described the concerns in what he called “my open letter to the health minister”.

Ms Jennifer Carroll MacNeill did not attend the conference, citing a previous personal engagement.

He said: “You’re talking about a fundamental reset of in-patient hospital care.” Consultants already run an on-call system at weekends.

“This will now mean we will have to have a similar system running on a Tuesday, a Thursday, a Wednesday to cope with what happens when consultants aren’t there,” he said.

The alternative he said is when a crisis strikes on the ward: “the patients are down in the out-patients (clinics) and they see all the doctors run out.” However HSE ceo Bernard Gloster defended his plans, in a speech and Q-and-A session during the AGM, held in Killarney.

He also highlighted how busy the services are, saying 1.8m patients were removed from lists last year.

He pointed to a reduction in patients waiting on trolleys for a hospital bed between the St Brigid’s day weekend and Easter weekend.

“We know that improvements in not only processes inside and outside hospital but also how we deploy our workforce are key to these types of results,” he said.

He stressed weekend hours will be required from all staff.

“I think it would be probably quite a waste of money to deploy consultants on a rostered basis at weekends, if the rest of the healthcare workforce isn’t,” he said.

“So therefore the proposal which I’ve now pursued, and which I continue to pursue, with hopefully some impact in a more sustainable way by the middle of this year, is up to 10% of the entire healthcare workforce can be potentially available to be rostered in a fair way at weekends.” He added this will “start to improve the level of routine functioning in the health service beyond Monday to Friday.”