TWO FIANNA Fáil backbench TDs, one of them a former minister for health, yesterday criticised plans by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to transfer all acute services from Monaghan General Hospital to Cavan General Hospital in two weeks’ time.
Dr Rory O’Hanlon and Margaret Conlon said they did not support the changes due to come into effect on July 22nd, saying adequate preparations had not been made in advance.
The changes had been anticipated, but their date was only announced by the HSE yesterday.
The new arrangements will see all acute medical services transfer from Monaghan to Cavan hospital, and Monaghan’s round-the-clock treatment room will be replaced with a minor injury unit which will be open 12 hours a day. Acute surgical services previously transferred from Monaghan to Cavan.
The move means no emergency services will be provided at Monaghan hospital from later this month. There will be no medical admissions or inpatient acute medical care provided there.
Patients needing emergency hospital admission will have to go to Cavan, Drogheda, Navan or Dundalk, the HSE said. It stressed that Monaghan would continue to provide day-surgery, day medical services, step-down and rehabilitation beds (26 in all), diagnostic and outpatient services.
The HSE said ambulance services had been improved in advance of the changes, and a new medical assessment unit and MRI scanner had opened in Cavan.
It said the transfer would free resources and facilitate the redeployment of staff.
“This will provide the necessary resources to address some of the risk issues which have been highlighted in past reviews and reports of different services.”
However, Dr O’Hanlon and Ms Conlon said the lead-in time to the removal of services was not adequate. “We have been repeatedly assured by HSE representatives that the removal of services would not take place until adequate measures were satisfactorily in place, but this is not yet the case.
“The ambulatory service, while recently extended, has not been properly tried and tested. The primary-care teams are not properly in place. The CT scanner is not in operation. Sufficient hours for home help and respite care are not currently available. In our opinion Cavan General Hospital and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda are unable to cope with the current patient load, never mind an increase in patients.”
They are seeking an urgent meeting with Minister for Health Mary Harney and HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm to discuss their concerns. Sinn Féin’s health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, a TD for the area, said the changes would put lives at risk. “Some 3,000 medical admissions per annum to Monaghan are to be transferred to Cavan General Hospital without the provision of a single additional bed in Cavan which is already operating at full stretch and beyond”.
Local Fine Gael TD Seymour Crawford said it was a sad and dangerous day for the people of Monaghan. “It is not by chance that the services were retained until after the recent elections and their closure announced in they dying hours of this Dáil session.”