Sir, – Fintan O’Toole (“Shocking numbers represent a failure by the HSE to do its job”, Opinion, August 19th) highlights five numbers that represent the utter failure of the HSE to deliver to the country’s health needs.
I have another one: 23.
That’s how many times I rang two Dublin hospitals over the course of four days last week. I’m currently undergoing treatment for cancer. My treatment is in a north Dublin hospital and I live on the southside. I was trying to arrange for a required blood test in the hospital that is a 10-minute walk from my house so that I did not have to travel to the one that is an hour’s drive away. This seemed like a straightforward task and the helpful staff at the local hospital were happy to assist. But it turns out that the hospitals had no way to communicate the results of the blood test between each other. There was talk of faxes, couriers and me picking up the results myself. Eventually, after literally 12 calls, I spoke to someone in the north Dublin hospital who provided me with that wonder of modern technology, an email address.
Everyone I spoke to (when I was able to get through) was unfailingly friendly but it genuinely felt at times like I was asking people to build a rocket ship to the Moon rather than take a completely standard test and email the results from one location to another.
Ann Ingle: Deliberately going out of my way to move for no particular reason has never appealed to me
Gerry Thornley: How about an alternative look at Ireland’s Six Nations win over England?
Is Ireland anti-Semitic, an outlier of tolerance or in the middle ground?
How risky is it to buy a second-hand EV?
I have withheld the names of the hospitals involved as I’m currently undergoing treatment. I’m back in the hospital soon, though, so I’ll find out then whether the effort has succeeded. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN KELLY,
Dublin 14.
