Varadkar to meet angry families about Portlaoise
LEO Varadkar i s to meet families whose babies died at Portlaoise Hospital following the damning report i nto standards of care.
The HSE’s director general Tony O’Brien has said there would be a ‘thorough review’ into a ‘significant lack of compassion’ shown to patients at the facility’s maternity unit to see if ‘there is anybody who shouldn’t be in the service’.
A report published on Friday by the Health Information Quality Authority found that eight newborn babies died in the scandal-hit Midland Regional Hospital.
Yesterday a spokesman for the Health Minister said he intended to meet the affected families tomorrow ‘to get their views and to see what they would like to see happen’.
The spokesman said a lot of families came forward to support group Patient Focus as part of the investigation into standards of care at Portlaoise Hospital and were invited to meet Mr Varadkar.
Mr Varadkar, who is a GP, is supportive of the disciplinary investigation announced by Mr O’Brien.
He said: ‘I believe we need much greater personal accountability in our health service. Doctors, midwives and nurses can be referred to the Medical Council and NMBI [Nursing and Midwifery Board] which can sanction them or even strike them off after a full and fair hearing.’
Mr Varadkar said the HIQA report was excellent and accepted all eight of its recommendations.
He said, however, it did not make any findings against any individual and therefore did not form the basis on its own to take disciplinary action against any individual.
The minister said: ‘ Summary dismissals and discipline do not stand up in court or the employment appeals tribunal and would expose the taxpayer to major compensation claims.
‘I can’t allow a situation to arise whereby someone who did not do their job actually ends up get a compensation payment because they did not get fair trial, so to speak.
‘Therefore, I welcome the fact that the director [Mr O’Brien] is launching an investigation by someone who is external to the HSE. I have made it clear that I want it to happen speedily and not drag on for years.’
In its report, HIQA detailed a litany of failings. The watchdog said the lack of quality of care and infrastructure in the hospital – including issues raised in several reviews and reports going back to 2006 – was putting patient safety at risk.
Most striking was the bereaved mothers’ and fathers’ harrowing accounts of their treatment. Two couples told how they received the remains of their newborns in metal boxes delivered to them on a wheelchair covered with a white sheet.
In one case, the box was not big enough and the dead baby boy was squeezed in, HIQA revealed.
Another bereft mother said she was reprimanded for crying ‘as it would upset other mothers’ in the ward.
The Irish Hospital Consultants Association yesterday expressed its sympathy to the families of the babies whose deaths triggered the HIQA report.
Dr Gerard Crotty, its president, said the report confirmed the HSE failed to resource the hospital sufficiently and ensure governance arrangements that could safely deliver the range of acute services to patients. He said that the ongoing underfunding of acute frontline services nationally was a fundamental problem, which is ‘undermining the safety and quality of acute care’.
The HIQA report found that management at every level in the HSE was aware of patient safety risks at the hospital but failed to act.
Mr O’Brien has said the report highlighted issues of accountability and resources, adding they now need to look at ‘accountability for things which did or didn’t happen’.
Mr O’Brien told RTÉ Radio: ‘One of the things I am going to do is bring in an external reviewer in accordance with our disciplinary procedure to look at issues of escalation of concern. There were many issues escalated, they didn’t always find their way to the right decision-making levels and I need to look at that.’
‘We need greater accountability’