Madam, - It is with regret that, as a group, we feel compelled to write this letter to inform the public of the deterioration of orthopaedic surgery services in the South Dublin/Kildare/West Wicklow Area.
Our catchment area has a population of more than 540,000 and is one of the fastest growing areas in Europe. Despite the obvious demands of demographics, our resources to provide services to the public have been continually decreased since our move from the city centre to Tallaght.
The situation now is that, despite an increase in consultant numbers and population, the number of beds available for treating patients has actually fallen from 50 to 20. This problem has been compounded by the recent A&E initiative which took people from the emergency department and used orthopaedic beds for treatment, thereby further decreasing public access to orthopaedic surgery.
At present we have a total of 20 beds available for 10 orthopaedic surgeons to provide the orthopaedic needs of the region. These figures show that the people of our catchment area are among the worst served in the country for orthopaedic care.
Ten orthopaedic surgeons are willing and available to provide a public service but we are prevented from doing so by lack of resources. The irony is that the very same patients who could be treated in the public service are now being treated under the National Treatment Purchase Fund at a vastly increased cost to the taxpayer.
This leaves doctors, nurses and allied staff idle, with underused operating theatre time and resultant serious consequences for training and staff morale. As a consequence of our lack of resources we cannot put through as many patients as we optimally could, and this has resulted in an increase in outpatients' waiting- times, providing further inconvenience to our population.
The situation continues to deteriorate despite repeated promises of more resources. Despite more than nine years of effort on our part to improve matters through negotiation, we have been constantly frustrated by health service management.
Can we look forward to the provision of properly resourced orthopaedic surgery, or are we witnessing the demise of elective orthopaedic surgery in the Adelaide & Meath Hospital, Tallaght? - Yours, etc,
JP McELWAIN, Chairman, Orthopaedic Subgroup;
DAVID BORTON, FRANK DOWLING, ESMOND FOGARTY, HAMID KHAN, DAVID MOORE, PAUL NICHOLSON, R SHANKAR, HUGH SMYTH, JOE SPARKES, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeons, Adelaide & Meath Hospital, Tallaght, Dublin 24.