Senior management of the Saolta Hospital Group has been accused of being heavy-handed with a whistleblower who revealed that no new patient beds would be opened with the creation of a new 75-bed ward.
The row over spending €18m to build a new block without alleviating overcrowding at University Hospital Galway has carried on for months, becoming an election issue, with Saolta allegedly fudging the issue on whether the 75 beds would be replacement or new beds for patients.
Councillor Pádraig Conneely has raised the issue several times in HSE West Regional Forum. In March he was told by chief operating office of the Saolta hospital group, Ann Cosgrove, that once the ward was built there would be one additional ward for escalation beds to deal with activity.
Staff had to make decisions about what wards to transfer to the new unit and while she could not confirm how many new beds would be opened, a ward held between 25 and 32 beds, depending on which ones were moved.
“When the block is developed we will have extra capacity and we won’t have patients waiting for significantly long periods on trolleys,” she told the meeting.
However, it has since emerged in the planning file for the development that hospital authorities insisted that the ward was to replace beds in other wards and no new beds would be created, which meant they were not obliged to create new car parking spaces.
At last month’s Forum meeting, Cllr Conneely rounded on officials, accusing them of being heavy-handed in their treatment of a volunteer member of the patient council who resigned after being accused of breaching a confidentiality clause.
Cllr Conneely said this person had revealed definitively that no beds would result from the massive investment.
Ms Cosgrove replied the person had resigned of his own accord after it was pointed out to him that he had leaked information about the project.
Cllr Conneely said that the information shared was received from a HSE staff member and had not arisen out of any discussion of the patient council.
“The man was only highlighting something he felt should be known publicly, he wasn’t doing it for self-gain or for financial reasons. I hope more people come forward with similar information,” added Cllr Conneely.
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