PLANS HAVE been drawn up to close two wards at Louth County Hospital in Dundalk and 20 beds at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda in the coming days due to a forecast critical shortage of junior doctors at both hospitals on July 1st.
The draft plan was due to be discussed with staff yesterday, but the scheduled meetings were cancelled at short notice.
The Irish Timeshas learned that the meetings were cancelled when the HSE nationally heard staff were to be told of contingency plans to deal with the junior doctor shortage, which had not been agreed at national level.
The proposed contingency plan for the northeast states there are already 31 junior doctor posts vacant at Lourdes hospital – almost one-quarter of all junior doctor positions in the hospital – and three out of five junior doctor posts in Dundalk are vacant.
When junior doctors or non-consultant hospital doctors rotate posts on July 1st the shortage is expected to worsen, not just in the northeast but all over the State.
A separate document on possible solutions to the crisis being discussed within the HSE and the Department of Health put the number of junior doctor posts vacant on May 12th at 360.
The Irish Association of Emergency Medicine warned last month the shortage could result in some hospital emergency departments having to close or limit their opening hours.
The plans proposed for the northeast – unless sufficient extra junior doctors can be recruited from abroad before the end of the month – state that acute medical and critical care services will be moved from Dundalk to Drogheda next month.
While this was planned in the longer term, when a new emergency unit and a medical assessment unit opened at the Drogheda hospital, the changes would now be rushed in if the contingency plan were implemented.
The document states that an interim five-bed medical assessment unit would be opened in Lourdes hospital to alleviate pressure on its emergency department and 20 medical beds would be closed at the hospital next Tuesday, June 1st.
The medical assessment unit would open on June 15th, the draft plan states.
Meanwhile, it suggests closing two medical wards in Dundalk, one on June 1st, the other on June 8th and closing the emergency department in Dundalk and replacing it with a minor injury unit, which would be led by a junior doctor and would be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week from July 1st.
A new, larger emergency unit is due to open in Drogheda when staff are found for it. The plan also envisages the closure of the intensive care unit in Dundalk before June 22nd and the phased closure of critical care unit beds there “over a two-week period in June”.
It adds that “the pace of these proposed critical service changes resulting from the deficit of non-consultant hospital doctors on July 1st, 2010, represents a complex and challenging undertaking”.
In a letter to Laverne McGuinness, a national director with the HSE, this week Stephen Mulvaney, regional director of operations for HSE Dublin North East, said Louth/Meath is the area most affected by the junior doctor shortage.
He warned the region could not wait to see what came from national initiatives to find more junior doctors before taking action. “If we are to have a workable contingency position for July 1st we need to begin implementing the plan attached from next week,” he wrote.
He added that the closure of acute beds at Dundalk hospital “fits with previously well-flagged measures” in this year’s national service plan including “up to 1,100 bed closures”.
The shortage of junior doctors is due to a range of factors. These include changes in Medical Council registration procedures for non-consultant hospital doctors, a reduction in designated training posts for junior doctors, a change to visa requirements for non-EU doctors coming to Ireland, and more Irish graduates emigrating due to a cut in pay.