This article is from page 4 of the 2009-04-07 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
PLANS by the Health Services Ex- ecutive to downgrade services at Ennis General Hospital will cut pa- tient safety “to the bone and perhaps cut safety beyond”, according to the Chairman of the Clare branch of the Irish College of General Practition- use
Dr Michael Harty was speaking in Ennis last Saturday at a protest against the planned removal of serv- ices from Ennis General Hospital.
Dr Harty told an estimated crowd of 3000 people that the argument for the provision of medical services in TRAE MICRO oKcemO IM stom IEC m ie ices should be centralised or whether most acute services should be pro- vided in “peripheral hospitals like Ennis and Nenagh”.
Dr Harty said, “This tiered system has worked very well in the past. But over the years Ennis and Nenagh have been systematically downgraded and undermined by a failure to develop the hospital in terms of staff and equipment, while at the same time concentrating development services in Limerick almost exclusively.”
“To minimise errors and mistakes, one has to practice safe and sensible medicine. And systems would be in place where there is sufficient safety to allow as complete safe and sensible care as possible. What is being pro- posed, by the transformation team, 1s to cut safety to the bone and perhaps cut safety beyond”, he said.
Consultant geriatrician at Nenagh General Hospital Dr Christine O’Malley said the HSE was going to “lock” Ennis General Hospital at night, after 24 accident and emer- gency services are withdrawn.
She said the HSE had deliberately deceived the public on the issue of patient numbers. Dr O’Malley told the crowd that the real night time attendance of patients at Ennis Gen- eral Hospital is 5,500 and at Nenagh General Hospital is 4000.
She said, “I know it is not going
to work, it can’t work. They haven’t got the ambulances they don’t have the beds in Limerick. They are go- ing to take your doctors away and leave nothing behind here and they don’t want you in Limerick. I’m sor- ry; I don’t know what to say to you. It can’t work, its not going to work, they are going to do it anyway”. Gerry Byrnes, a retired surgeon who worked at Ennis General Hos- pital for 27 years also doubted the capacity of the Midwestern Regional Hospital, Limerick to cope with in-
creased numbers of patients.
He told the crowd “If this planned change of the A&E in Ennis goes through, followed in July by taking acute surgery out of the hospital, I’m not sure that the infrastructure is there for Limerick to cope.”