500 OPERATIONS A WEEK CANCELLED IN OUR HOSPITALS
As the political parties squabble, with FF and FG refusing to talk to each other, record numbers of patients are missing procedures...
MORE than 500 operations and elective procedures were cancelled every week last year, new figures have revealed.
The shocking toll of hospital delays – equivalent to more than 100 every single weekday – lays bare the full scale of the overcrowding crisis in our health service.
Information obtained by the Irish Daily Mail shows that almost 27,000 non- emergency medical and surgical procedures were cancelled last year, many as part of Health Minister Leo Varadkar’s response to overcrowding in emergency departments.
While Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil TDs
continue refusing to talk directly to each other over forming a new government, patient safety groups have called on all political parties to ‘come together to address the health service once and for all’.
Stephen McMahon, of the Irish Patients’ Association, warned that cancelling elective surgeries could put lives at risk.
He said: ‘I will use an example I know of: a woman in her 80s, who was waiting almost a year for prolapsed womb surgery, ended up in the emergency department from complications.
‘I know of many patients who had an elective procedure cancelled, only to later end up in the emergency department. That is a sobering experience in a real human sense.’
He continued: ‘These numbers are huge, and they are very concerning. Often when you hear the term “non- urgent” and “elective”, you think these aren’t serious cases. But they are, and when they are put off they become more serious.
‘I don’t accept that the cancellation of surgeries is acceptable. I met the Director General of the HSE and the Secretary General of the IMO (Irish Medical Organisation) a number of weeks ago and discussed this issue specifically.’
Mr McMahon added: ‘ The scale of the health crisis will add to the public pressure on TDs to form a new government quickly. I do have a concern that in this interim period of government, this problem continues to grow.
‘Leo Varadkar did sit in for hours at a time on the emergency department t ask f orce meetings. Yesterday I got a confirmation that they have not set the next date. I have said that whoever is the minister for health must sit in on that meeting, and we need to set a date for it as soon as possible.
‘If anything comes out of all of this political shadow boxing, I would like to think we could see a common approach across the board among all parties to sort the healthcare system out once and for all, because when you have elderly people waiting days on trolleys with no dignity, it is a call to the whole body politic to pay attention.’
One source in the Department of Health told the Mail that many of the 27,000 cancelled procedures may be outsourced to the private sector, as the number continues to grow, and that this would likely be ‘very costly for the taxpayer’.
A spokesman for the HSE said that cancellations are ‘a feature of every hospital system and the number of cancelled operations should be viewed in the context of overall hospital activity’.
The spokesman said the data does not indicate the reason for cancellation but said it could be for clinical reasons and staffing reasons. ‘We do not have information on whether these patients have since been admitted, but it would be normal for the admission to be rearranged within a short period of time,’ said the spokesman.
Mr Varadkar said earlier this
‘Very costly to the taxpayer’
year that cancelling elective procedures and surgeries was part of the plan to tackle overcrowding. He said: ‘It’s not ideal but it is better than having very large numbers or even higher numbers on trolleys.’
According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, there were more than 400 patients on trolleys in hospitals around the country yesterday. And on Wednesday of this week, it emerged that there were 537 on trolleys nationwide.
The Mail’s figures on cancelled surgeries come as Fianna Fáil’s spokesman for Health Billy Kelleher yesterday expressed alarm following confirmation that the hospital waiting l i sts have reached what he described as ‘a new high’.
The party obtained figures which showed that 71,559 patients are waiting for in-patient or day case surgery, which they say is a 32% increase under Mr Varadkar’s tenure.
Mr Kelleher said: ‘The deterioration of our health service has continued on Minister Varadkar’s watch. The waiting time targets set out by the minister continue to be missed.’
He added: ‘The number of patients stuck on outpatient waiting lists also jumped by some 15,000 in February. It’s now over 390,000 and there are concerns that it will soon breach the 400,000 mark.’