HEART BEAT:Downgrading of hospitals exposed as a charade
THE ROMAN writer Ovid, who trained as a lawyer, lamented " Omnia iam fient fieri quae posse negabam", translated as "All the things I said couldn't happen are happening".
Brian Lenihan could follow his example, and acknowledge the same thing is happening to him. Yesterday’s position is hastily evacuated and we deny that we ever stood there. Remember that Nama was actually going to make us money. Now laugh on.
There is a strong feeling that we are approaching the endgame. It is time the Government stopped the frenetic and expensive efforts to delude us. It is way past time that we stopped trying to delude ourselves. What is coming is going to be very hard.
In the medical world, all acute surgery has been stopped in Navan. This action by the HSE, in breach of medical and nursing agreements, follows a familiar pattern. Firstly, reduce funding, then make it impossible to recruit and retain staff, thus leading inevitably to ward and unit closures. Finally, rely on so-called “expert advice” to downgrade the hospital “in the interests of patient safety”. In the case of Navan, we are told that the Royal College of Surgeons prompted this drastic step.
Apart from the fact that the staff at the hospital – at all levels, in all disciplines – were not consulted, nor were the people of Navan and surrounds, a simple question remains to be answered: where are all the displaced patients to go?
The Minister will not answer – it is a matter for the HSE. The HSE provide bluster and waffle. The Department of Health provides nothing, and I suspect that Hiqa, the latest accretion to this bloated administrative colossus, would have little to contribute on this fundamental problem.
But the Royal College might tell the patients what alternative provisions are to be provided for their safety. We wonder was the RCSI aware that on the night in question, there were patients waiting on trolleys in all of the proposed alternative facilities – a situation that can only get worse with the approach of winter.
They might also enlighten us as to why, out of the blue, they provided the “expert advice” leading to the latest closure. It might be too much to ask that such advice be published.
On the night they were betrayed, emergency patients from Navan were apparently to be sent to Cavan General Hospital. Seemingly nobody had told Cavan about these arrangements, but that’s par for the course.
On the night of September 8th, Cavan had 20 patients on trolleys. Ah well! Send them to Drogheda, which had the low number of only nine trolleys that night, or to the Mater or Beaumont (21 trolleys each), or Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown (only 10 trolleys that night). I stress that these are end-of-summer trolley numbers.
This charade has been acted out before in the North East region, when Monaghan and Louth hospitals were downgraded without adequate replacement facilities. It happened in the Mid West, where Ennis and Nenagh were axed on the pretence that better, safer facilities would be provided at the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.
A press release from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) on September 7th stated that 45 patients were waiting for a designated hospital bed in Limerick Regional: 24 were in the emergency department, 11 were behind doors or in corridors of wards already full and 10 were in a “transit” lounge – whatever that might be. The HSE denied these figures.
Corroboration of the nurses' position was provided on RTÉ's Drivetimetwo days later by a former mayor of Limerick and previous chairman of the now defunct health board. He told of his experience in bringing a gravely ill family member to the hospital. He described rows of trolleys, side by side, with scarcely passage between them.
Let us stop immediately closing beds and units until better facilities are available to treat our patients with dignity in safe surroundings.
Monaghan, Louth, Ennis, Nenagh and the multiple others under fabricated threat now, may not be the best hospitals in the world, but they were good caring institutions that looked after their communities well. They have been supplanted by non-performing nonsense.
mneligan@irishtimes.com