WAITING LISTS for surgery and specialist treatment are about to get longer at Waterford Regional Hospital because of more than €6 million in cuts and the departure of up to 70 nurses by next month.
The hospital is facing the closure of three of its eight operating theatres, as well as a surgical ward and a number of inpatient and outpatient beds, as a result of the cuts being implemented by the Health Service Executive and the recruitment moratorium.
By the time the new pension regime comes into place next month for public service workers, about 70 nurses will have left the hospital without being replaced since the recruitment embargo started.
“The cuts are pretty drastic,” a source within the hospital said yesterday, confirming the spending measures had been all but signed off by the HSE.
The HSE said as part of its national service plan agreed by the Minister for Health, it was “in the process of finalising its regional service plan, taking account of the significant level of budget reduction, the Government moratorium on staff recruitment and the expected increase in the number of staff retiring early due to a change in the pension entitlements that take effect after February 2012”.
The HSE South will publish its regional plan at the regional health forum on February 9th and has already started talking to staff associations and unions about the implementation of the cuts.
Waterford Regional Hospital is one of the State’s designated cancer care centres but campaigners have long said it did not get the investment it needed to fill that role, even before cutbacks kicked in. Now, under the looming cuts, elective procedures are set to be first hit, while waiting lists for specialists and to have surgery will lengthen.
“Low-complexity stuff just isn’t going to get done,” the hospital source said. “Lists will get longer and they’ll be waiting longer for surgery once they have been seen. There may be restrictions in some specialist drugs as well.”
Other measures being considered include a clampdown on the employment of agency nurses and other staff, reductions in outpatient and day clinics, as well as an increase in car-parking charges.
News of the cuts comes a year after plans to “reconfigure” acute hospital services across the south-east were kicked to touch by the outgoing government. Those plans looked set to cut services at the region’s other acute hospitals.