A new national organisation being set up to campaign against the implementation of the Hanly report will consider putting forward candidates in the June local elections.
Confirmation of this possible strategy came yesterday at a press conference in Dublin where it was announced the organisation will be put on a firm footing at its first conference next month.
The organisation is being formed from a number of local hospital action groups in Ennis, Nenagh, Monaghan, Roscommon, Athlone, Ballinasloe, Mallow and Mullingar. The groups fear smaller hospitals in their areas will lose accident and emergency services if the Government-backed Hanly report on hospital reorganisation is implemented. The report has recommended minor injury units instead of full A&E units for some smaller hospitals.
The spokeswoman for the steering group set up to form the organisation, Labour senator Ms Kathleen O'Meara, said a number of Fianna Fáil councillors in the regions were supporting the group's campaign.
She claimed Hanly was not good for patients, communities or the taxpayer. It will lead to the downgrading of some 26 hospitals, she said.
Dr John Barton, a consultant cardiologist at Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, said the report's principles were fundamentally flawed. They were based on centralisation of services at a time when the UK was moving back towards decentralising services. It was, he said, generally accepted that bigger hospitals did not mean better outcomes for patients.
The chairman of the Monaghan Community Hospital Alliance, Mr Peadar McMahon, said people who wondered what Hanly would do to their local hospital only had to look at Monaghan Hospital. It had its services gnawed away without adequate alternatives being put in place. The hospital had been off-call for months, which meant it could not accept emergencies through its A&E unit. He listed a number of incidents which, he said, had resulted from this arrangement. These included:
A recent case where it took over 1½ hours for a man who suffered a heart attack in Monaghan to be taken by ambulance to Dundalk.
On a number of occasions, he said, ambulances have had to call GPs to the side of the road to stabilise patients going to larger hospitals in the region.
He said his alliance was investigating reports that an ambulance crew directed by a GP to immediately bring a patient to Monaghan Hospital had refused to do so because protocols dictated they take the patient to Cavan. The patient died shortly after arrival in Cavan.
Last evening the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said claims by the new group that hospitals would be downgraded and services closed under Hanly was out-rageous. He said services will be far better when Hanly is implemented. "It's scaremongering and it's designed to create a bandwagon effect to get people elected in the local elections," he said.
The new group's conference takes place in Kill, Co Kildare, on Sunday, March 7th.