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PATIENTS IN NEED of heart care consultancy in the east of the country are waiting up to 22 months for a cardiac appointment.
The waiting list for public cardiology outpatients of Our Lady’s Hospital Navan (OLHN), Co Meath currently stands at 581.
Of those, 32% (184) have been waiting for longer than a year to be seen, with the longest waiting 22 months.
The list refers to patients who have been referred to the hospital by an outside agency, such as their GP, as needing a cardiac examination.
“The GPs and the patients are the ones really suffering here,” a source told TheJournal.ie.
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Of course if you wait long enough for something to go wrong your best bet is to call into casualty, but that’s not much use for someone trying to catch a problem early.
Currently, the director of cardiac services at the hospital is a locum (agency staff). That has been the case since current president of the board at the Irish Heart Foundation (IHF) Kate McGarry left that position at OLHN in 2014.
It’s understood that a process to select a permanent head of cardiac services as her replacement has yet to begin.
OLHN has one of the highest rates of locum practitioners (as opposed to HSE-contracted staff) in the country.
The cardiac waiting lists at Navan hospital are subsumed within the overall lists provided by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (at present the NTPF does not provide waiting lists by specialty for each hospital).
At present there are 792 people who have been waiting for longer than a year for outpatient treatment at the hospital, of which 23% are waiting for cardiac services (there are 66 medical specialty waiting lists detailed on the NTPF site).
‘Absolutely shocking’
Local Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín said of the situation that “healthcare denied for this length of time, in this area, has to be leading to serious negative health outcomes for patients”, adding that “allowing patients to languish for up to two years is absolutely shocking”.
In contrast to the lengthy waiting list for a consultation, the list for non-invasive procedures is relatively short – between three and eight weeks for tests such as blood pressure monitoring, ECHO testing (using sound waves to monitor a heart’s chambers), and stress testing.
All invasive cardiology procedures required for Navan patients, meanwhile, are referred to the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin.
There is just one physician at OLHN dedicated to providing non-invasive heart consultancy.
In September, TheJournal.ie revealed that the hospital has been operating for at least two years without a single HSE-contracted doctor in its Emergency Department (ED) – a fact which left it particularly vulnerable to a recent wildcat strike on the part of locums across seven Irish hospitals.
When that strike began, four out of five of the locums staffing the ED in Navan failed to show up for work for four days, with the department eventually bolstered by staff drafted from other areas of the hospital.
Regarding the issues being seen with the cardiac waiting list, a spokesperson for the Ireland East Hospital Group (IEHG) told TheJournal.ie that “IEHG is working with Our Lady’s Hospital Navan to significantly reduce this waiting list”.
The spokesperson said that two full-day clinics have been scheduled to clear those patients on the list who have been waiting the longest in a bid to get the wait time to under 12 months.
“It is clear that the HSE are not providing the necessary resources,” said Tóibín.
It is incumbent upon the Minister for Health to step in personally and provide the necessary resources for the people of Meath. This major resource gap leads to further questions regarding the government’s commitment to a fully functioning hospital in Navan, given the radical increase in population in Meath over the last 15 years and the dysfunction of some of our neighbouring hospitals.
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Not a mortgage holder, and I’m not unbiased, but fair play to the Govt for staring them down
No vested interests either, but I’m even more shocked that at the stance they took in the first place.
Like It takes guts to do that when the bank is state owned! Give yourselves a salary increase for help with our spin.
The PTSB are the biggest gangsters in this and are gettin away with it. They increased the rates 3 times recently and although they will be reducing this .25% they are still by far the dearest.
I think you’ll find Ulster bank are the most expensive at 5.1%
AIB only exists because stupid taxpayers pay their bills.
I can not believe that they are getting away with this. The Bank has 3,000 employees it does not need and coupled with a host of branches that should be shut the cost to the tax payer is truly astronomical. recent salary increases on top of inflated salary levels add to the pension fund cost.
Why is the EBS rate 1.5% higher than AIB and they are merged institutions?
The EBS borrowers are being excessively penalised….
I think every aib or bank worker on the journal is giving the thumbs down
What recent salary increase would that be?
I started with EBS, some years ago when they were among the cheapest on the market, and I liked the whole idea of a mutual. Because of the race to the bottom, driven in part by Anglo, AIB were at one (later) point the second cheapest on the market for mortgages, and this received some publicity, with the IT publishing a comprehensive “scoresheet” as it were of the rates available at that time-late ’06 or very early ’07.
So I called into them, just before the whole thing went South, and, like the guy on the bus, I didn’t know what a tracker mortgage was, but they offered me one, as well as the (declined by me) chance to buy another investment property, or take an ‘oul holiday.
Happily I took it, and even happier, they took on board a ridiculously high valuation of my family home, giving me a loan to value that bore no relation to reality. I still have that-and am gladdened by the fact that those on variable rates are getting a bite of the cherry-I could still be there myself but by chance.
if every aib account holder withdrew their deposits and moved them elsewhere, they’d get a rude awakening!
The Dutch did this a fews years ago over bonuses to top staff. They gave them back More power to the people
They didn’t rise rates in the first place like all the other wanks. People should do some research before judging.
People are just looking for money for nothing, now they are getting a better rate than before the ECB increases.
The ESB is state owned but does not entitle people to free electricity, why should it be different with the banks.
Still doesnt stop them giving there staff a pay rise
I think it was quite reasonable that if AIB didn’t pass on the recent rises, they should not have to pass on the cut. This turn around seems totally illogical to me. Nice for those affected & good luck to them but nevertheless quite daft!
Wow great, lucky us – taxpayer to pay back reckless mortgage holders loans
This is a direct transfer of cash from depositors to mortgage holders
Is there anything stopping the banks from raising their rates in say a months time, irrespective of any change in the ECB rate? It never seems to stop PTSB as far as i can see.
Great stuff, with govt interference like this how do they hope to get private investment in order to get the NPRF’s investment in AIB back? Very short sighted decision, especially given AIB never passed on the last two increases.
You couldn’t make this stuff up
Yeah but if you raise interest rates it pushes more people into the cannot pay bracket and so we end up paying anyway, at least this makes repayments more affordable.
More likely it pushes them to restructure or sell. Banks should not be in the business of giving away money.
Why does it feel wrong that banks are passing on a saving to customers ?
Oh no, wait a second ……
News flash – Banks claim PR error and state that it should of read raise rates by 0.25%. The error is set to cost taxpayers a Further 10billion for some reason but banks have decided the double the rate increase to 0.5% because a senior exec was afraid they mightn’t be able to fund the regular replacement of the gold chairs that they use while at their weekly meetings in their ivory tower in the Bahamas.
Instead of posting the new rates in papers banks have simply setup a very easy system in every branch to accommodate these new costs. All customers of the branches should empty their pockets into barrels that are marked “slush funds”. An Taoiseach should simply sign a blank cheque (as they might need more the 10bil, you never know) and make it payable to cash or C#^?s , either way the ecb will know who it’s for!
have your say