Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda has become embroiled in another controversy after it invited the son of a leading Monaghan hospital campaigner for a "procedure" he didn't need.
The mix-up occurred when an appointment to attend the hospital was sent to Mr Declan McMahon (22) when it should have gone to another patient with the same name, but at a different address.
After he received the letter on Monday asking him to attend for a procedure on Thursday, he called the hospital to say he was not due to attend for any procedure and was in perfectly good health.
"He was told he had attended a consultant's clinic in the hospital on November 14th and when he said he had not, he was asked was he sure," his father, Mr Peadar McMahon, chairman of the Monaghan Hospital Community Alliance, told The Irish Times yesterday.
"The response from the hospital was it must be somebody else then," he said.
Mr McMahon said the letter gave rise to a number of serious concerns: given the mix-up, another patient may have missed out on his appointment on Thursday, and there was the possibility that his son's medical notes now contained results of tests on another patient.
A spokeswoman for the North Eastern Health Board, which runs the hospital, apologised for the mix-up which she said was the result of an administrative error.
"People do unfortunately make mistakes and obviously we aspire towards excellence, but occasionally these things can happen," she said.
She pointed out that the correct patient was immediately contacted when the error came to light and that patient, who had been in regular telephone contact with the hospital, had the procedure he was meant to undergo carried out as scheduled on Thursday.
She added that at no point would medical notes be entered in a patient's file without checking the patient's address and date of birth.
There was no question she said of the patients' medical notes being mixed up.
"When the appointment was made the patient's name was punched into a computer and his address and date of birth was not cross-checked. It was purely an administrative error," she added.
Meanwhile, Mr McMahon pointed out that the letter from the hospital was dated November 20th and arrived in his house on November 24th for an appointment on November 27th.
"It was pointed out to my son in big print that he must attend a pre-screening clinic one or two weeks before the date of procedure and that failure to do so would mean that his procedure would be cancelled," he said.
He said this meant even if his son was the right patient for the letter, it would already have been too late for him to attend the pre-screening session by the time he received it.
The health board said the letter was being sent to the other patient purely for his records. That patient was aware of the requirement to attend pre-screening and had so attended, she said.
Mr McMahon, whose group has been campaigning for the retention of a range of services at Monaghan General Hospital, said Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital was the centre of excellence in the north east.
"Is this a health service we can have confidence in?" he asked.