CUH consultants seek independent staffing assessment over patient safety fears – The Irish Times

An independent assessor is required to determine appropriate staffing levels at Cork University Hospital, consultants have urged.

In a letter to Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill on Wednesday, the consultants wrote that a staffing shortfall was “already affecting patient services and will increase the risk to the safety of CUH patients heading into the winter period”.

“We believe that this has occurred as a result of years of underfunding relative to other similar-sized hospitals. This, we contend, is due, in part, to a recurring desire of CUH management over many years to stay within their budget allocation when other hospitals did not.”

On Wednesday morning the Minister said CUH must improve in managing its budget and deploying its resources.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland, Carroll MacNeill said that over the past five to six years, staffing at CUH had increased by 40 per cent, while its budget had risen 108 per cent. This year, she said, CUH was significantly over budget.

“We cannot continue to increase health budgets by 10 per cent and 15 per cent and 20 per cent. That’s totally unrealistic,” she said.

“They have to manage within their budgets, and other regions and other hospitals are.”

In their letter, which was also sent to the head of the Health Service Executive, Anne O’Connor, the doctors said “the consultant body is fully behind the CUH chief executive, Jennifer Kearney, when she insists we are at least 600 bodies shy of what the hospital needs and not 250 bodies over”.

In a letter to the HSE last week Kearney said delays in approving posts and restrictions on recruitment had left CUH facing a shortage of more than 1,000 staff.

She said the hospital was facing increasing patient safety risks as a result.

“I do not believe that the current position is sustainable, nor do I believe it is safe to enter the winter period with the level of staffing uncertainty that currently exists,” she wrote.

Demand at the hospital was increasing faster than the available workforce, she wrote, creating “sustained pressure” on emergency care capacity and patient flow as winter approaches.

The Cork University Hospital consultant staff committee on Wednesday said it welcomed news that a number of senior doctors who had previously been denied formal contracts, despite being offered and accepting the posts months ago, were now being taken on, with some due to start on Monday.

However, the group expressed “deep disappointment” at the Minister’s comments on Wednesday morning. It said the Minister had appeared “to dismiss the real concerns of hospital management and clinicians over the significant impact the recruitment embargo and capacity deficits have and will have on patient safety and outcomes”.

It said it also “strongly disagreed with the Minister’s assertion that the view of the National Patient Safety Office at the Department of Health should override the view of a local hospital CEO or consultants on the ground”.