You are reading 1 of 15 free-access articles allowed for 30 days
Air ambulance helicopter landing at the Mater Hospital helipad during an aeromedical simulation in October 2019. Photo: Peter Doyle
Hospital consultant crisis could ground Major Trauma Services plan, IHCA warns
‘Government needs to recruit and retain more emergency medicine specialists’
Prof Alan Irvine, IHCA
Plans to expand Major Trauma Services across Irish hospitals won’t get off the ground unless the Government tackles the consultant and recruitment crisis, the country’s leading doctors have warned.
This week it was announced that Dublin’s Mater Misericordiae Hospital has been earmarked as the Major Trauma Centre for the Central Network.
Almost one million could be on hospital waiting lists by year-end, consultants warn Extra funds allocated for mental health treatment is criticised as ‘grossly inadequate’
Tue, Mar 2, 2021, 09:34 Updated: Tue, Mar 2, 2021, 09:39
Almost a million people could be on waiting lists for hospital care by the end of this year unless the Health Service Executive (HSE) addresses the lack of beds and need for greater recruitment, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has warned.
The consultants’ group warned on Tuesday that public hospitals are on track to suspend more than 900,000 patient appointments by the end of this year when 2020 and 2021 figures are combined and when compared with pre-Covid times.
Prof Alan Irvine, President of the IHCA
We must plan for future as waiting lists grow, warns IHCA
Plans to tackle growing waiting lists after the current surge in Covid-19 cases ends must begin now, the President of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association has said.
New figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) showed there were now 838,675 people in Ireland in the queue for hospital treatment.
By the end of 2020, the number waiting on an outpatient appointment to see a specialist had increased by 50,000 since the start of 2020 to 606,230.
The NTPF data released last Friday (January 15) also showed that 72,475 patients were waiting for inpatient or day case treatment, while 32,539 were waiting for a gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy.