Doctors say new system can’t last for much longer

THE new system in place for our hospitals is working now but it won’t work months from now, according to the medical director of the Hermitage private clinic.

Dr Mike Allen – also a general surgeon in the Hermitage, Connolly Hospital as well as treating breast cancer patients in Beaumont Hospital – insisted that while Covid19 needs to take priority now, we also need to look at measures in the coming months that will allow regular hospital work to continue.

Dr Allen, pictured, told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Everything has been geared to deal with the Covid pandemic.

‘We could have been a situation like

Italy; luckily we have been spared that. They did manage this well and they made difficult decisions at the right time.

‘The current situation has worked; it’s still very early in terms of the effect it is having on individual practices. Most of the elective outpatient of minor to major complaints have almost stopped.

‘In Beaumont we probably see 100 to 120 patients a week. It was down at one stage to 30, so that is a huge number who are not being seen and I’m sure it is similar throughout the country.

‘We can’t keep that going forever. So we will have to open the clinics a bit but we are seeing the patients who have the critical lumps , so the services are continuing certainly at a much more reduced rate, so that certainly works but just for the moment.’

Commenting on the criticism the sector has faced for having beds lying idle while regular hospital work grinds to a halt, he added: ‘There’ s a big difference between having an empty bed and having a staffed bed. A lot of the staff have been reallocated to other areas. Others are working back at base camp so it’s very hard to measure.’

For the most part, time sensitive surgeries are still going ahead with St James’s cancer operations taking place in the Blackrock clinic and medical oncology in Tullamore and Mullingar moved to the Hermitage to increase capacity for local hospitals.

However, Dr Allen warned that this is sustainable for weeks but not months as pressure on the public system grows.