MORE THAN 1,000 people turned out to sign “books of condolences” outside Monaghan hospital yesterday as the long campaign to prevent withdrawal of acute services from the hospital ended unsuccessfully.
The HSE announced two weeks ago that all acute services would be transferred to Cavan hospital from July 22nd. The disclosure came despite concerns voiced by GPs, two local Fianna Fáil TDs Margaret Conlon and Dr Rory O’Hanlon, and the local community. Yesterday the transfer went ahead.
Several patients were transferred to Cavan but the last patient in the intensive care unit at Monaghan was moved to Dublin’s Mater hospital as locals, including many elderly people arriving in taxis, queued in the rain to sign the “books of condolences”. The country singer Big Tom McBride was among them, with more than 1,000 people having signed the books by yesterday evening.
As well as acute medical services transferring to Cavan, Monaghan hospital’s 24-hour treatment room has been replaced with a minor injury unit which will be open 12 hours a day. In future Monaghan will provide day-surgery, diagnostics, and 26 step-down and rehabilitation beds.
The HSE has claimed the move is an attempt to provide safer services but Dr Illona Duffy, a Monaghan GP and a long-time campaigner for the retention of local hospital services said the move was more about cost-cutting than improving services.
She pointed to an internal HSE memo sent by Stephen Mulvaney, hospital network manager for the northeast, in April to the director of nursing at Cavan/Monaghan hospitals, to bear this out. The memo suggested that services at Monaghan should have been transferred even earlier, at the end of May. “We simply do not have the funding thereafter,” he wrote, for them to remain open. He noted beds would also have to be closed in Cavan and services would have to manage within what was available.
Dr Duffy said: “This is just not safe for patients. The people of Monaghan are now being disadvantaged not only by the distance they will have to travel to access acute care but also by the fact that their care is being provided in an overstretched hospital in Cavan.”
She added that there will be no doctor other than the out of hours GP to see to the patients staying on in the step-down beds in Monaghan from now on.
Peadar McMahon of the Monaghan Hospital Community Alliance said it was a sad day for the people of Monaghan.
He said he felt fearful for the future as the last time the hospital was taken off call in 2002-2004 some 17 people died. “This time they say we will have advanced paramedics to keep us alive until we get to Navan or Cavan . . . but we have no proof they will be able to keep a person with a heart attack alive over such a journey,” he said.
The HSE said a number of staff have already moved to services outside the hospital and a number of others have applied for redeployment.
“This will be progressed in the week following the transfer of acute medical services to Cavan general hospital,” the executive added.
