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Drumm's statement raises more issues
[Posted: Mon 15/03/2010 by Niall Hunter, Editor www.irishhealth.com]
HSE CEO Prof Brendan Drumm has said he is determined to find out why around 58,000 x-rays went unreported by radiologists at Dublin's Tallaght Hospital, as questions have emerged about the HSE's role in the scandal.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the Tallaght Hospital crisis, Prof Drumm told RTE Radio it was also totally unacceptable and appalling that GP referral letters to Tallaght were unanswered.
Significantly, the CEO has also said the performance of the HSE in running the health service over the past five years should be independently reviewed.
The CEO's radio comments on This Week about the Tallaght scandal raise questions about how much the HSE knew about it before news of it broke in the media earlier this week.
It has also emerged that the Tallaght Hospital Board last April heard concerns about the public perception of how the hospital was performing in a newly-introduced HSE hospital monitoring system published on the HSE website.
Brendan Drumm said he only became aware of the Tallaght situation last Tuesday and moved immediately to set up an inquiry into the matter.
However, Tallaght Hospital CEO Prof Kevin Conlon has already stated that he told the HSE about the 58,000 unreported x-rays in mid-December, as soon as he learned of the extent of the problem.
It is not clear why this information was apparently not conveyed to Prof Drumm by his officials at the time.
Prof Drumm said the HSE did not have a role in the day-to-day operations of voluntary hospitals like Tallaght and there was no imperative on the hospital to inform it of any backlogs in services.
However, the HSE has for some time being monitoring hospital performances in areas such as waiting times for operations, outpatient appointments and diagnostic tests. Since last spring, it has been publishing these performance statistics on its website.
Last April, Tallaght was being given a "red light" or "unsatisfactory" score under access to services and use of resources.
Tallaght board minutes from oneof two meetings that month, which was when local GP Prof Tom O'Dowd raised the x-ray and referral letters issue with the Chairman, show that concern was expressed at the board meeting in relation to public perception of how Tallaght was performing in relation to the HSE performance metrics.
The April minutes show that the board agreed that a realistic timeframe for positive improvement in the HSE performance metrics would be June.
However, the HSE's performance stats for Tallaght for December last show the hospital continuing to perform poorly in terms of GP to hospital referral wait times for routine outpatient diagnostics and on average waiting times for new routine appointments for outpatient consultant-led clinics.
The HSE gave Tallaght a red light, or "unsatisfactory and requiring urgent attention" score under both of these headings in December, the most recent month for which the monitoring states are available.
The figures show that the average wait for an ultrasound following GP referral to Tallaght is nearly six months, and around two months for an x-ray, while the average wait for an appointment at an orthopaedic outpatient clinic is three years.
While these figures refer to patients whose referral letters would have presumably been opened and dates given for tests or clinic appointments, the HSE's own monitoring statistics were clearly showing on a regular basis that there were major patient access problems to outpatient services in Tallaght Hospital.
At a further board meeting later in April, the "deleterious impact" the hopsital's emergency department and admissions problems were having on all other aspects of the hospital, especially elective (non-emergency treatments) and outpatients, was discussed. It was stated that this issue had been raised at a number of board meetings.
A number of GPs in the Tallaght Hospital catchment areas have complained about the length of time it takes for their patients to to be dealt with once they sent in referral letters to Tallaght.
This week it emerged that thousands of referral letters were not even being opened. The hospital says these letters are now being dealt with.
The Irish College of General Practitioners has expressed concern about the unopened referral letters.
Its spokesman Dr Mel Bates has said if the referrals were “parked” because of long waiting times, there were better ways of dealing with that.
Dr Bates said said the College was keen that the time between a referral letter entering the hospital and being signed off by a consultant was the shortest possible.
It has been reported that the Tallaght board discussed unopened referral letters at a meeting in May of last year. However, the minutes of board meetings from May onwards are not on the Tallaght website.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael Health spokesman Dr James Reilly has said Brendan Drumm is failing in his duty by refusing to take any responsibility for the Tallaght scandal.
"His handwashing and refusal to accept responsibility was reminiscent of Pontius Pilate," Dr Reilly said.
The CEO, in his radio interview, also said the performance of the HSE should be independently reviewed.
He said it may be time for the organisation to be reviewed by an independent agency in order to identify areas where it was making headway and other areas where it was not.
This is the first time Prof Drumm, who due to step down during the summer, has effectively questioned the performance to date of the much-criticised health executive.
CATHY Posted:
16/03/2010 00:06 |
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Prof Drumm{not Ms Harney} is to blame for all the shortcomings in the HSE, so a poor show by a doctor! As a doc and prof he should have done a better job, thank God he is stepping down{ no doubt with a nice package-- a package that should be used for patient care not for ineffective performance HE GETS THE RED LIGHT |
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