Health service crisis - How many patients have to die?

TODAY’S heart-rending report on the tragic death of an 85-year-old woman, who died following hospital treatment for a broken wrist, is yet another damning indictment of Ireland’s health system and particularly of management procedures at one of the country’s biggest hospitals.

It is poor consolation to the distraught family of Honora Madden that the general manager of Cork University Hospital has offered his “profound regret and sincere apology for the overall management processes” leading up to their mother’s death.

There can be no denying this was a death that could have been avoided. Nor can there be any excuse for how Ms Madden was treated by a system where she was accorded neither the dignity nor respect due to a woman of her advanced years.

In the event, she had to endure long fasts and considerable pain waiting for operations that were repeatedly cancelled.

Public disquiet about the health service will be heightened by the account contained in her daughter’s poignant diary of this distressing case.

Although the family wrote to Health Minister Mary Harney to complain of the treatment meted out to their mother, the buck was passed by the department to the Health Service Executive (HSE).

As a result, the minister is perceived as washing her hands of political blame in this deplorable scenario.

Obviously, the HSE is responsible for the day-to-day running of the health service but the political buck ultimately stops on Ms Harney’s desk.

Having shed both the Tánaiste’s mantle and leadership of the PDs, this scenario will reflect badly on her image at a time when she is re-doubling efforts to make some impact on the country’s intractable health problems before the next election.

Adding to the political difficulties facing the embattled minister, the Cork case comes to light within days of publication of a damning report on a HSE investigation into the appalling case of 76-year-old Pat Joe Walsh.

A retired farmer, he bled to death at Monaghan hospital before the eyes of his family because doctors were banned by red tape from carrying out a relatively straightforward life-saving operation after the theatre closed at 5pm. As he lay dying, three hospitals wrongly claimed they had no bed for him.

In equally graphic terms, the appalling tragedy of Honora Madden’s death is illustrated by the fact that she walked arm-in-arm with her son into Cork University Hospital on March 2 after breaking her wrist. She died on July 14 and was buried with a broken arm.

The account of her hospital experience makes for distressing reading.

The hospital admits she had to wait excessive periods for a bed on her first two admissions to CUH. In March, it took 28 hours to find a bed for her. After being cancelled twice due to emergencies, the operation on her wrist finally took place four days later.

Re-admitted to CUH on June 28 after a fall at St Finbarr’s Hospital, she spent 17 hours on a trolley and her arm was eventually put in a splint. In July, when she was again admitted, the hospital was so busy that surgery on her broken arm was again cancelled on two occasions, leaving the elderly patient in severe pain, according to her family.

She was subsequently to develop pneumonia and died at the hospital on the afternoon of Friday, July 14.

Honora Madden’s death is all the more shocking because it could have been avoided.

This tragedy is the grim reality of a health system which, despite all the political promises, remains under-resourced, under staffed, overcrowded and inequitable in the extreme.