Well over 4,000 public patients at Galway’s two major hospitals have been referred to private hospitals for inpatient and day procedures as well as outpatient appointments in the last two years.
Newly-elected Galway West TD Catherine Connolly condemned the practice of using taxpayer’s funds to send public patients to private facilities, which she said was running down the public system while propping up the private hospitals.
The Health Service Executive (HSE) revealed that 2,615 inpatients and day patients had been treated at private hospitals as far away as Mullingar and Limerick in 2014 and 2015. A further 917 outpatients had been seen by a private specialist – the vast majority of them, 777, at the Bons Secours Hospital in Galway.
In total 4,446 public patients were seen privately in the period.
This did not include referrals for scans. In the last year alone 3,546 public patients were sent to the privately owned Merlin Park Imaging Centre for CT and MRI scans – 849 more than 2014.
Deputy Connolly also raised the waiting lists for otolaryngology patients at this week’s Regional Health Forum West meeting, where it was revealed there were still 841 patients waiting to see an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist despite nearly 200 patients being sent to private hospitals for their consultations around the country.
Of those 841 patients waiting for an inpatient or day procedure in ENT at Galway University Hospital (GUH) – 341 of them for over a year and 164 for two years or more.
The HSE reported that 193 patients on the waiting list had been referred to private hospitals and clinics in the last two years.
She asked why ENT patients had to wait so long and what was the solution to bring down the waiting list. She queried why more ENT consultants were not appointed to deal with the long-standing backlog.
Ann Cosgrove, who has been promoted from general manager of GUH to chief operating office for the Saolta University Health Care Group, said there was a deficit in capacity in the public system, with a lack of doctors, theatre time and physical space for outpatients.
She said a new appointment was made in the last year but this was almost cancelled out by a medic who had gone on maternity leave and who was not replaced.
ENT was a “a higher speciality” involving complex conditions which required a great deal of monitoring and return appointments.
“We’re maximizing existing capacity but it’s not enough. Everybody will be aware the hospitals have been greatly impacted by emergency admissions and that does impact on elective admissions. There is always a tension between all the needs – emergency, elective and outpatient appointments.”
She said the hospitals were working to minimise patients who missed appointments and were regularly holding “virtual clinics” over the phone or over the internet.
The new manager of GUH, Chris Kane, said there had been a winter surge of elderly and sick patients coming to the hospital which had put additional pressure on resources.
The latest available figures from last year show there were 8,330 people waiting more than a year for an outpatient appointment at University Hospital Galway at the end of February 2015. That represented an increase of 250% on the same month in 2014.
The Saolta group was fined €1.189 million – out of €3.7m levied nationally – by the HSE for having too many patients waiting 18 months or more to be seen. The fines were imposed for the final five months of 2015 to encourage hospitals to dramatically cut waiting lists, which has led to an increase in private referrals.
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