Independent Waterford TD Matt Shanahan claims ‘the new pay and numbers strategy being employed by the HSE embeds regional inequality in access to healthcare for southeast patients’. ‘We have a regional model 4 hospital in the southeast, UHW, whose headcount is now technically frozen at levels that sees it the most underfunded and under-resourced hospital among its 8 national peers’ he says.
‘This is impossible to understand he says, given that this hospital has the 4th busiest accident and emergency department in the country, its orthopaedic and trauma delivery is among the busiest in the country, and it suffers historically long waiting lists in specialties such as rheumatology, dermatology and neurology among others’.
‘This hospital is also the referral centre for serious acute illness for the southeast patient catchment of 530,000 – despite this it has the least resourced stroke unit, the lowest number of emergency hospital consultants and despite being a regional cardiac care centre, access to emergency cardiac cath lab intervention for acute heart attack, remains just 60 hours per week, Monday to Friday 8:00am to 8:00pm’.
‘This hospital has received numerous promises from the senior health minister, 3 Taoisigh and 2 Tánaisti in this 33rd Dail’ Shanahan says. ‘Promises to long-awaited capital investment and resourcing based on recognition of this hospitals efficiency remain to be addressed’. ‘The facts are, the new HSE numbers policy now means this hospital is deliberately constricted from any further significant activity or service growth. How is that supposed to improve the regional acute healthcare situation’?
‘The present numbers cap now introduced sees a maximum ceiling of whole time equivalent staff number of 2800 for UHW. By contrast the model 4 hospital in Cork (CUH) is operating from a ceiling just over 5200, a difference of 2400! The numbers differential cannot be justified by any meaningful analysis of the activity levels between these two hospitals’ Shanahan says.
‘The latest sting now coming to this hospital relates to new nursing recruitment’ Shanahan says. ‘At present there are over 30 South East Technological University (SETU) final year student nurses in training at UHW, with course completion just weeks away. Some family members have contacted me to say it appears these nurses will not now be offered permanent positions once qualified because of the numbers ceiling’.
‘Some have already made plans to travel abroad and amazingly a number are considering job offers at CUH which despite its already generous allocation seems to have no difficulty in adding to its staff number’. ‘This raises a significant national question for me’ says Shanahan – ‘Where is the sense in offering Irish work permits for nursing specialities from across the globe while not supporting our Irish nurses to remain here? ‘Is it now national policy to force our nurses abroad once qualified even when it is widely known we have a national shortage across our system here’?
‘Why University Hospital Waterford staff and patients should be treated in this way is impossible to understand’ says Shanahan. ‘One opinion perhaps is that with the southeast network recombining under a new configuration with St. Vincent’s Dublin, the continuing ‘old boys medical club’ in Dublin is using their influence to ensure they secure the lion’s share of any spare funding circulating’.
‘I have written to Stephen Donnelly today in relation to the position of the student nurses at UHW. I have asked him to ensure that promises made to full employment on qualification at UHW, which was agreed when this training site was chosen, be honoured’.
‘This hospital is being continuously passed over for ‘like -for- like’ resourcing with other model fours’ Shanahan says. It is his opinion that ‘the people of the southeast need to make their voices heard in advance of a general election and bring an end to what amounts to, a continuing imposition of a second tier healthcare system for acute and chronic patients in the southeast region.’