Named and shamed: Ireland's dirtiest hospitals

THE country’s dirtiest hospitals are laid bare in a damning report that shows widespread neglect of basic hygiene practices like hand-washing, bin-emptying and general cleaning.

Waterford Regional Hospital shares bottom place with Dublin hospitals Beaumont and St Columcille’s, Loughlinstown, in the first National Hospitals Hygiene Audit, which found a shocking 91% of public hospitals fall below acceptable standards of cleanliness.

Despite the growing incidence of MRSA and other “superbugs”, just five hospitals are found to have a level of hygiene categorised as “good.”

Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney described the findings as “very disappointing” and said it was “extraordinary” that top hospitals ignored basic precautions like hand washing. “There has to be a change in attitude,” she said.

Hospitals which fail to clean up their act before the next two audits, to be carried out in the new year, could face paying for their inaction through caps on their annual budgets.

National Hospitals Office (NHO) director Pat McLoughlin, said: “We are looking at the possibility of performance management and linking budgets to that. Any extra funding for hospitals is going to be linked to areas we can measure and hygiene is now something we can measure.”

This first name-and-shame exercise was carried out amid growing concerns about MRSA and other superbugs, which patients pick up in hospitals and which are resistant to most antibiotics.

Some 550 cases of MRSA were recorded in Irish hospitals last year but many patients are believed to have carried or contracted other hospital acquired infections.

All 54 public acute hospitals were audited in unannounced inspections during the summer and graded as good, fair and poor. Just five were graded good, with a score of 85% or over; 23 were fair, with a score of 76-84%, and 26 were poor, scoring 75% or below.

The lowest score was 24%, for the condition of the ward and kitchens serving the intensive care unit for newborns at Erinville Maternity Hospital in Cork. Mallow General Hospital had the highest overall score of 88%.

Stephen McMahon, of the Irish Patients Association, welcomed the report as validation of concerns long voiced by the organisation.

Apart from the threat to budgets, the health authorities’ approach to improving standards is more carrot than stick.

A €20 million fund has been allocated for hospitals needing to make infrastructural changes and a new national hygiene standards code will be introduced in January with specific personnel designated to oversee improvements.

The Irish Nurses Organisation’s director of industrial relations, David Hughes, said its members welcomed the audit’s findings.

“If the next report is as bad as this one, we will all have a lot to answer for,” he said.