Children hit by wait of 18 months for heart clinic

CHILDREN with serious heart conditions are now having to wait 18 months to see a specialist at an outpatient clinic, a leading paediatric cardiologist has warned.

Dr Orla Franklin (pictured) said the delays were affecting children attending Temple Street Hospital in Dublin, including those awaiting a diagnosis for obstruction to blood vessels, valve problems or even a hole in the heart.

“I don’t know if anyone is going to die, but I do know there is a risk,” she warned.

Dr Franklin said the lack of intensive care beds in Our Lady’s Hospital, Crumlin was also affecting children in need of cardiothoracic surgery.

“There is a bottleneck in access to intensive care beds. But if you opened another five of these beds in Crumlin, you would not be able to recruit the staff to look after these children,” she said.

The difficulty in recruitment applied not only to nurses but also to specialists in intensive care, she said.

Around one in 150 children is born with heart disease and another 500 new young patients need treatment every year.

Dr Franklin was speaking at the launch of the pre-budget submission by the Irish Hospital Consultants Association.

Doctors have reported delays across hospitals, including Beaumont in Dublin, where shortages of staff have led to one in four theatre lists being cancelled on an ongoing basis.

Some 100 surgeries have been cancelled at Cork University Maternity Hospital so far this year.

In the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland Hospital Group, a limit of 440 has been put on the number of hip replacements, although the hospitals could carry out 700. In Waterford, 30 operations on men who have urinary problems, due to an enlarged prostate, have been cancelled and many older patients are relying on a catheter. The waiting-list crisis comes as a damning report found that, although an additional €500m in extra funds has been pumped into acute hospitals, there has not been an increase in performance.

The analysis was carried out by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

It showed that six of the seven hospital groups now have a higher cost per inpatient than they did three years ago.

The highest cost per patient was in the three Dublin children’s hospitals and in the south, south-west group, which includes Cork, Kerry and Waterford hospitals.