The Health Service Executive is set to come in for criticism from hospital consultants this weekend for its ongoing failure to implement certain recommendations contained in the Lourdes Hospital Inquiry report.
A motion condemning the HSE for its inaction regarding recommendations in the report is tabled for debate at the annual conference of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA), in Mullingar on Saturday.
Judge Maureen Harding Clark, who chaired the inquiry which examined the high rate at which Caesarean hysterectomies were carried out by Dr Michael Neary at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, also sharply criticised the HSE in recent months for failing to implement her report's recommendations.
Finbarr Fitzpatrick, secretary general of the IHCA, claimed yesterday the HSE was "particularly slow" in coming forward with assistance to implement the recommendations around audit and review at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, even though consultants were anxious to see it done.
Furthermore, he said, the HSE's national hospitals office had asked all obstetric units in the State, following the publication of the Lourdes Inquiry report, if they were complying with its recommendations but seemed to have done little since.
"We met the director of the national hospitals office, John O'Brien, in April and we were told that we would have a further meeting with him when the responses from the obstetric units were studied which we understood would have been in about a month but we have heard nothing since," he said.
The HSE admitted in August it had not yet looked for a person to co-ordinate the audit of all clinical activity at the hospital.
However, it insisted this did not mean there was no audit of clinical outcomes at the hospital at present. Yesterday in a statement it said the post of clinical audit co-ordinator had been included in its estimates for 2007. And it said a range of other developments had taken place. "A clinical governance process has been put in place, new practice guidelines are in place and new labour ward multidisciplinary handover procedures agreed and implemented in line with best practice," it said.
"There is a daily team meeting in the delivery suite attended by consultant obstetricians, medical staff and midwifes. The purpose of this meeting is to review births which have taken place in the previous 24 hours including adverse incident discussion," it said.
In addition, it said its survey of obstetric units found most were complying with the recommendations in Judge Harding Clark's report. "In most cases they met or exceeded the requirements in the Harding Clark report but we identified resource needs in some hospitals and these are being incorporated in our service plan for next year," it said.
The IHCA conference will also debate motions calling for the scrapping of current proposals for competence assurance tabled by the Medical Council. The proposals, which aim to ensure doctors are up to date and competent in their practice, would see patients and colleagues of doctors surveyed for their views on individual doctors.
The conference will also discuss fresh proposals for the resumption of consultant contract talks which were issued yesterday.