THE HSE has said it doesn’t anticipate any impact on services for patients attending hospitals from next week as a result of a shortfall of more than 150 junior doctors.
Hospitals across the State are facing staff shortages from next Monday when 158 junior doctor posts remain unfilled in HSE-run hospitals under the next training rotation. Further unfilled posts will arise in voluntary hospitals but their number is not known.
The lack of junior doctors is likely to affect hospital emergency departments most as this is the area where the biggest shortfall arises.
The failure to recruit adequate numbers of junior doctors, despite a major recruitment drive overseas, will lead to shortages in a number of emergency departments, particularly in small hospitals, HSE chief executive Cathal Magee warned yesterday.
He told the Public Accounts Committee that hospital managers were working with senior doctors to devise contingency arrangements and to ensure the impact on patient services was minimised.
The HSE was unable to say where the biggest staff shortages would occur, though it is focusing on staffing issues in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda, the Mid-Western Hospital in Limerick, and Mullingar, Tullamore, Portlaoise and Naas hospitals. A spokeswoman said it expected individual hospitals to cope in the short-term by redeploying staff, changing rosters and providing locum cover. Defending the HSE’s response to the problem, Mr Magee said it had arisen because of a contraction in the supply of junior doctors overseas.
Speaking after the meeting, a HSE spokeswoman said the shortage of junior doctors was an evolving situation and the problem was nowhere as bad as had been forecast a few weeks ago. She said the shortfall stood at almost 450 doctors just a fortnight ago but was now down to 158 and was continuing to fall.
The problem would be resolved over the coming weeks as junior doctors recruited from India and Pakistan obtained work visas for Ireland, she added. The shortage coincides with continuing problems arising from long waiting times at hospital emergency departments, the committee heard yesterday. Waiting times stood at an average of eight hours last January and dropped to 6.1 hours in April, HSE figures show. At the end of April, almost 1,400 people were lying on trolleys in the emergency departments of 33 hospitals.
The number of patients waiting for 12 hours or more in emergency departments grew from 44 per day in 2010 to 63 in the first half of this year. Two-thirds of patients are seen within six hours but the figures for some hospitals are much lower than the average – under 20 per cent in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda and 40 per cent in Tallaght hospital.
Mr Magee said patients waiting on trolleys for long periods was not acceptable. Other officials admitted there had been no significant improvement in emergency department waiting times since the Comptroller and Auditor General reported on hospital performance in 2009 but said that “dramatic improvements” would be achieved later this year.
This would be achieved through recruitment of additional specialists in emergency and acute medicine, the creation of medical assessment units and greater involvement of GPs in screening patients before they arrive in hospital, according to the HSE’s Prof Gary Courtney.
At present, Mr Magee said, 70 per cent of patients arriving at the emergency departments of Dublin hospitals were self-referred.
6.1hrs
average waiting times at emergency departments for April.
1,400
people on trolleys in the emergency departments of 33 hospitals at the end of April.
63
patients waiting for 12 hours or more to be seen by a doctor in emergency departments in the first half of the year.