HEALTH UNIONS have asked the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) to intervene “urgently” over the manner in which the Health Service Executive announced the cessation of emergency and acute surgery at Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan last week.
HSE management in the northeast discussed the issue for more than two hours yesterday with unions including the Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’ Organisation (INMO), Siptu, the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association (IHCA), Impact, the Medical Laboratory Scientists’ Association, and Unite.
The HSE said last Wednesday that acute and emergency surgery would stop with immediate effect, citing “expert external clinical advice” for the decision.
Unions claimed that management failed to provide them with that expert advice but had given a commitment to provide it at a further meeting on Thursday.
The unions also said they wanted the executive to explain why certain elective surgeries such as gall bladder operations had not taken place at the hospital since last Tuesday. Four or five women scheduled for gynaecological operations have also had operations cancelled and are now on waiting lists to have them elsewhere, according to one local GP.
Donal Duffy, assistant general secretary of the IHCA, said that at yesterday’s meeting, management had “admitted they had breached their obligations on consultation”.
The INMO said the failure of the executive to engage with the relevant stakeholders prior to this major announcement was “clearly in breach of the Employees (Information and Consultation) Act, 2006, the Public Service Agreement and agreements linked to the transformation agenda in the northeast”.
In a statement, the HSE described the meeting as “a very good and constructive engagement . . . Both sides have agreed to reconvene on Thursday when a number of issues, raised at the meeting today, will be addressed.”
The health executive said there was “ongoing engagement with staff and key stakeholders to deal with the practical implications of the decision”.
Dr Niall Maguire, secretary of the Meath faculty of the Irish College of General Practitioners, said elective procedures had been “swept away” at the same time as acute surgery, even though the Navan hospital was “perfectly suitable” for them.
He said a report published last year had stated this to be the case and there was “no contradictory statement from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland” that such surgeries should not be carried out in the hospital.
The college has supported the health executive’s decision to cease emergency acute surgical services from September 1st following a “significant fall-off” in emergency surgical procedures carried out there.
“All the evidence is that Navan hospital is a suitable site for minor and intermediate elective surgery. For example, it’s not suitable for a burst appendix, but it’s suitable for varicose veins, gall bladder or hernia operations,” Dr Maguire said.
Dr Dominic Ó Brannagáin, clinical director of the Louth-Meath Hospital Group, said last week that because of the volume and complexity of the surgical activity at Navan it was “no longer tenable” to perform acute and emergency surgeries, and these should be moved to alternative sites.
Standing orders were suspended at a meeting of Meath County Council yesterday to debate the decision. Some councillors claimed lives had been put at risk by the move. Meath Fine Gael TD Damien English said there was “clearly no medical evidence” to withdraw all surgical services from the hospital. He accused the health executive of “spinning” when it claimed these closures were based on medical grounds.