I just read an interesting snippet that I thought I’d share with you.  The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has dubbed 2009 as ‘the year not to get sick’.

Why not get sick? (well, apart from the obvious reasons of it not being high on anybody’s wish list)

To paraphrase Irish Hospital Consultants Association Assistant Secretary General Mr Donal Duffy: The cutbacks planned for the emergency departments nationwide are much wider than just reducing the number of emergency units.

Basically, the HSE discovered that some hospital Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments had very few after hours patients which meant that staff were not busy during those hours and even that there were more staff than patients at various time.

The response has been to plan the removal of all Emergency Services from those hospitals. For instance, Acute services in general are to be reduced and that includes the Emergency Department (ED) in Nenagh General Hospital. The caseload will be shifted to the already struggling Limerick Regional Hospital.  GP’s from Northern Tipperary have pointed out that it will leave patients from Northern Tipperary without reliable nearby emergency services.  They also pointed out that there were up to 32 patients on trollies in Limerick Regional Hospitals Emergency Department at least once during the past two weeks.

The jobs of Medical Specialists do not look set to become any easier in 2009.

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