Councillor claims consultants too busy to discharge patients

At least 30 patients were occupying beds at University Hospital Galway (UHG) unnecessarily on a single night because consultants were too busy with their private practice to discharge them, according to a city councillor.

The claim was made by Fine Gael Councillor Padraig Conneely who was querying the number of consultants employed at UHG and Merlin Park who also practised privately.

He was told in a written reply that consultants could hold three different types of contracts – they could deal with public patients only or public and private patients, with or without permission to treat private patients at UHG and Merlin Park.

While there were 196 consultants at the two Galway City hospitals, this was not broken down by contract type.

Cllr Conneely told this month’s Regional Health Forum West meeting that consultants ruled the roost at the two public hospitals in the city due to their contracts.

Just a handful had public-only contracts, he believed.

Chief operating office of the Saolta University Health Care Group, Ann Cosgrove, said consultants had access to between a fifth and a quarter of the beds in the public hospitals.

Cllr Conneely said it was well time for the HSE to only employ consultants who treated public patients, instead of sticking to the two-tier system.

“I was in the hospital at 1am and a senior nursing staff member said that at least 30 people were in beds that night in the hospital who needed to be discharged but couldn’t because a consultant did not come back from his private work to discharge them,” he insisted.

“It’s an issue that needs seriously to be looked at.”

Ms Cosgrove said the discharged of patients was delayed for a number of reasons – care packages were being organised, some patients were being made wards of court, others needed rehab and yet more had very complex health needs.

“I certainly wouldn’t consider delayed discharges were down to consultants attending to private patients. The public system is totally weighted to the public patient – 80% of activity is public patients.”

She added that the contracts were drawn up nationally and the hospitals could not change them.

Forum chair Cllr Tom McNamara said a big effort was made in 2008 to create contracts for consultants to work only in the public system but there had been no takeup.

“So you should go back to your own health minister Padraig,” the Fianna Fáil representative from Clare advised.

Cllr Connelly retorted that the minister at that time was Progressive Democrat Mary Harney, who was part of the Fianna Fáil-led government.