Consultants: The Health Service Executive (HSE) has now decided to engage an outside firm of consultants to review bed-capacity requirements in acute hospitals across the State.
When it emerged in March that there was to be a fresh review of hospital bed capacity, the HSE said the director of its national hospital's office, John O'Brien, had been charged with conducting the review "as a matter of priority".
Now, however, it has confirmed that an outside firm of consultants will conduct the review.
"An external consultancy will be commissioned to conduct this review and prepare an independent report for the HSE," it said in a statement.
It is expected the HSE will have to tender for these consultants and it is unclear at this stage how much the review will cost.
The review, the HSE said, would identify acute bed-capacity requirements for the Republic up to the year 2020. It will set out how many beds are required in each region and the types of bed required, whether they are for adults or children, and whether they are medical, surgical or obstetric beds.
The team conducting the review will also have to identify the capital and revenue cost implications of any additional beds required and advise on how to meet the identified need.
When the review was initially announced three months ago, doctors' representative organisations claimed the need for extra beds in the Republic's acute hospitals and the number of beds required had already been clearly identified. They pointed to a review which fed into the National Health Strategy published in 2001, which promised to provide 3,000 extra beds by 2011, but said that most of these had still not been put in place.
Finbarr Fitzpatrick, secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, claimed another report was being commissioned to avoid action and decision-making.
The HSE said it had now established a steering group, chaired by Mr O'Brien, to oversee the review and it would be in regular communication with the external consultancy appointed to conduct the study. There are 16 people on this steering group, half of them from within the HSE.
There are also three Department of Health representatives, one representative of the Department of Finance and a representative of the Central Statistics Office. Other members include the ESRI's Prof Miriam Wiley; Kilkenny hospital consultant Dr Gary Courtney; and Dr Mary Codd, clinical epidemiologist and
senior research fellow at UCD's school of medicine and medical science, who conducted the previous bed-capacity review.