THE FUTURE of a number of smaller hospitals across the State looked increasingly uncertain last night after a damning report into the quality and safety of services at Ennis General Hospital recommended services at other similarly sized hospitals should now be reviewed.
The Health Information and Quality Authority found it was unsafe to provide acute surgery, intensive care, round-the-clock emergency care, paediatric and maternity care at the 88-bed Co Clare hospital.
It urged the Health Service Executive (HSE) to review the configuration of emergency care services at other smaller hospitals with a similar activity profile to Ennis with a view to consolidating emergency services in regional centres, leaving smaller hospitals to deal with minor injuries only.
It also said the HSE should review critical care and acute surgical services at other small hospitals to determine if they were being provided safely and in accordance with best practice. Smaller hospitals like those in Roscommon, Mallow and Ballinasloe may therefore be in line to lose services.
Minister for Health Mary Harney welcomed the report, saying it underlined the need for significant change in the way acute hospital services are organised in order to ensure a safe and high quality service for patients.
“I have asked the HSE to give careful consideration to the report’s conclusions and recommendations, not only in relation to Ennis, but to the delivery of acute hospital services generally,” she said.
The HSE said the finding that the current arrangement of acute services offered in smaller hospitals are not consistent with the provision of optimal care had implications outside the midwest. “The HSE is already working to address these issues in the northeast and south and is committed to ensuring everyone has access to safe, high quality care across the country,” it said.
But Opposition parties hit out at the report for its failure to examine in detail how two cancer patients – Ann Moriarty and Edel Kelly – were misdiagnosed at Ennis hospital.
The cases of both women, now deceased, led to the inquiry being established but the investigation team stressed they were asked to investigate services in Ennis as a whole rather than to carry out a forensic analysis of what happened in individual cases.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly said it was remarkable the report was silent on these cases but was instead being used to support an agenda of closing small regional hospitals.
“A worrying theme emerging regarding hospitals such as Portlaoise, Ennis and Monaghan, is that they are being starved of resources and made unsafe . . . then these reports are used as leverage to close down services rather than fix services to make them safe for patients,” he said.
Labour Party health spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan said there were fears the report will now be used to justify HSE plans to downgrade smaller hospitals and centralise virtually all acute services.
Sinn Féin spokesman on health Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the report was being used by the Minister for Health to justify her programme of hospital centralisation which has “nothing to do with patient safety and all to do with cutting services and cutting short-term costs”.
The family of Ms Moriarty said their campaign for an inquiry had been vindicated by the report’s findings but it expressed anger that nobody had been held accountable for her misdiagnosis.