The chairwoman of the Irish Medical Organisation consultants committee has strongly criticised the recommendations of the Hanly Report on the future configuration of the health services.
Dr Christine O'Malley, a consultant geriatrician and chairwoman of the Medical Board of Nenagh Hospital, said last night that "Hanly is completely unworkable and will not happen". She was speaking to The Irish Times following a meeting of the Irish Association of Internal Medicine (IAIM) in Wexford on Saturday which formally rejected the Hanly recommendations.
The meeting, which was attended by consultants from hospitals in Dublin, Limerick, Tipperary and Ballinasloe decided to issue a formal public statement later this week outlining the specific concerns of the IAIM.
Its president, Dr James O'Hare, consultant physician at Limerick Regional Hospital, said the Hanly Report was not concerned with the quality of patient care.
Members also criticised its failure to address the issue of funding and said it took no account of the need for a massive building programme to centralise hospital services.
Dr O'Malley said proposals to centralise accident and emergency services would "overload" the Irish hospital services. "In the mid-west, the regional hospital is in Limerick. There is a need to protect the likes of Limerick from the excessive workload it will face if hospitals such as Nenagh and Ennis are effectively closed," she said in reference to the Hanly Report's recommendation that accident and emergency services be centralised in regional centres of excellence.
"People in Dublin need to wake up also. If the 8,500 patients currently admitted to St Michael's Hospital and Loughlinstown hospital attend St Vincent's Hospital, look at the effect this will have," Dr O'Malley said. "If St Michael's and Loughlinstown were closed it is very difficult to see how St Vincent's could bear the burden," Dr O'Hare added.
Medical sources said it was highly significant that the attendance at the IAIM meeting included specialists from Dublin and other regional centres as well as those working in smaller units around the State.
According to Dr O'Malley, it would be more expensive to run a centralised hospital service, as proposed by Hanly.
"This report is about abolishing secondary care. Department of Health statistics show that at a tertiary care unit, it costs €590 a day for a patient's treatment. In a general [secondary care] hospital, it costs €390 for the same work. This makes the Hanly Report too expensive to implement," she said.
Dr John Barton, consultant physician and cardiologist at Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, said: "I see this as a national issue rather that a local one." Describing Hanly as one of the most detrimental pieces of health policy to ever hit Irish hospitals, Dr Barton added: "This is the wrong thing to do. This is the wrong prescription."