The shortage of junior hospital doctors has worsened, according to new figures presented to the Joint Committee on Health by the HSE today.
HSE chief executive Cathal Magee said 191 junior hospital doctor posts were vacant in hospitals around the country. A fortnight ago, before a major rotation of staff on July 11th, the shortfall stood at 150 posts and the HSE said it would continue to fall.
A breakdown shows that 43 posts remain unfilled at Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda, 21 in the Mid-West Hospital, and 15 in the Midlands Regional Hospital. Some 53 posts in emergency departments remain unfilled.
Mr Magee said the shortages in the system would be greatly alleviated by the arrival of junior doctors from India and Pakistan. Some 300 of these doctors have applied for visas and 128 have already arrived in Ireland, but they will have to meet new
Medical Council registration rules before being allowed to work.
A HSE spokesman said the gaps in staffing were being filled by locums and through extra overtime until the new doctors became available. The shortage of staff in the north-east had led to some sick children being sent to Dublin for treatment, but otherwise the effects were minor.
Minister for Health James Reilly acknowledged that he had given a commitment before the election on the future of services at Roscommon Hospital that he hadn’t been able to keep, but again defended the closure of the emergency department in the hospital.
He also defended the figures he cited earlier this month, which appeared to show that the mortality rate from heart attacks in Roscommon was four times that in University Hospital Galway. But he said he was prepared to engage in a “conversation” with critics who claim that the mortality rates in the two hospitals are broadly similar.
Hiqa (Health Information Quality Authority) had made a decision about the safety of Roscommon’s emergency department long before these figures emerged, he said, and “Hiqa is not for moving”.
He said it would be wrong to give the wrong impression about the future of the department, or else people with chest pains or multiple trauma would turn up thinking wrongly they could get the treatment they needed.
Mr Reilly claimed that little had changed since the closure of the department, with just two patients being transferred from Roscommon to Galway last week.
However, Denis Naughten, who was expelled from Fine Gael over his support for the retention of the emergency department, said this was because Galway couldn’t cope with the flow of patients and other patients had been sent to other hospitals in the region.
Mr Naughten said the medical case had not been made for the closure of small isolated emergency departments such as the department at Roscommon.