THE HEALTH Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has confirmed it is to seek a briefing from the Health Service Executive (HSE) on plans to close beds at Monaghan General Hospital after GPs in the northeast claimed patients could be put at risk by the move.
The HSE plans to close 56 acute medical beds at the hospital as part of its drive to concentrate acute medical care for Cavan/Monaghan at Cavan General Hospital.
It is claimed locally that Cavan hospital would have to cater for an extra 3,000 medical patients a year as a result but with few extra beds.
The transfer of services is due to take place in the coming months, the HSE said, but only after a medical assessment unit is ready in Cavan. That unit is expected to be ready in March.
Dr Seamus Clarke, a family doctor in Clones, said GPs had raised their concerns about the plan with the HSE and asked for an independent risk assessment be carried out, given that the 56 Monaghan beds were being replaced by just six medical assessment beds at Cavan hospital. This risk assessment, they said, should focus on the possible safety implications for patients and GPs.
He said that when the HSE failed to allay their fears they wrote to HIQA. In a reply HIQA said it would raise their concerns with the HSE’s national hospitals office.
“There is a risk and patients are exposed and we are not carrying the can for the risk,” Dr Clarke said.
A spokesman for HIQA confirmed yesterday that its director of healthcare quality, Jon Billings, would be requesting a briefing from the HSE on its proposed reconfiguration of services in the region.
The HSE has always insisted that the reconfiguration of services is in the interests of patient safety.
Meanwhile, GPs in the midwest have again claimed that planned changes to AE and other services at the smaller hospitals in their region are fundamentally unsound and unsafe.
In a statement issued yesterday, Dr Brendan Thornton, secretary of the North Tipperary and Clare GP committee, said the changes were unsafe when there was no money to finance them and at a time when further cuts to hospital budgets in the region were on the cards.
“For safe changes to occur, it is fundamental that adequate resourcing needs to take place at all levels of the health service, primary care, ambulance service, community support services, and at hospital level – this has not happened.
“These changes are not safe when, essentially, there is not ‘a bean in the pot’ to finance them. We understand that the necessary extra financial resources are not being made available but rather the changes have to occur within existing budgets,” he said.
Yet the HSE seemed set to “plough on regardless”, added Dr Thornton.
The HSE says the changes in the midwest are also aimed at providing safer care for patients.
It has said ambulance services will be expanded and that extra advanced paramedics deployed before the changes are put in place.
Extra theatre space is also to be provided at Limerick Regional Hospital, which will retain a round-the-clock AE service.