Waterford hospital report ignored key issue, consultant says

Campaigners for improved cardiac services in Waterford have rejected the findings of a Government report that suggests the University Hospital Waterford unit should be downgraded.

The Department of Health "queered the pitch" for the review by imposing terms of reference that ignored the key issue of clinical risk, according to Dr Patrick Owens, a consultant cardiologist at University Hospital Waterford.

This ensured the author of the report, Dr Niall Herity, who has recommended some services be moved from Waterford to hospitals in Dublin or Cork, "was asked the wrong question," Dr Owens told The Irish Times.

He accused consultants in Cork University Hospital of making “inflammatory” remarks when suggesting to Dr Herity in a presentation that Waterford was a small unit engaged in “low-risk” interventions.

‘Quite galling’

Waterford provides “a full panoply of techniques” and its cardiac services have grown “exponentially” since the cath lab opened in 2008, he said.

“To have all that behind you and then to be told you are to stop and then hand specialities over to another region is quite galling.”

He described as “utterly fanciful” a suggestion in the report that patients in the southeast who lived more than 90 minutes away from a major cardiac centre could be transported by helicopter.

Dr Owens also disputed the population calculations in the report: “The number of procedures we do implies a greater effective catchment population than he is giving us credit for.”

He said the single cath lab in Waterford was hugely oversubscribed, with waiting times of up to 18 months.