Health body urged not to ‘farm out’ MRI scans

The Health Service Executive (HSE) has been urged to cease the tendering process that would result in a private company being awarded the contract to carry out MRI scans in the public hospital at Merlin Park.

West Regional Health Forum member, city councillor Catherine Connolly (Ind), says the tender process underway for an imaging service at Merlin Park should be “reviewed, with a view to having it stopped”.

Cllr Connolly says that there is “no need for private companies to profit on public property”. She says that the HSE should operate the MRI service itself, through the public health system and not by ‘farming it out’ to a private for profit company. She has raised this issue consistently since becoming a councillor.

Cllr Connolly said that in 2013, she was aware of a woman who was dying, and was waiting on the list for 10 days before getting an MRI scan.

The woman was on a ‘priority list’ along with some 30 other public patients – the list actually swelled to more than 40 waiting for priority scans.

In 2010, under the previous service level agreement between the public hospital and private firm that operated the imaging service at Merlin Park, public patients were not given scans between midnight and 8am, she said.

Cllr Connolly said that the previous agreement was “bad for patients”.

“It came about, in my opinion, because they were trying to run-down the public health service. They were deliberately running-down the public health service in favour of for-profit health and private hospitals. That’s why during the boom we had theatres closed, beds that were closed and wards closed, while all the time public money through the National Treatment Purchase Fund diverted to private hospitals,” she said.

She made the comments in response to a report the HSE gave Cllr Connolly on foot of a series of questions in relation to the nature of contracts between the HSE and private MRI scans firm.

Cllr Connolly said that the report didn’t give any of the detail that she had asked.

“It begs the question, what else are they not telling us and what other agreements like this, that are bad for the public health system, are in place that they aren’t telling us?” she asked.