Consultants call on Minister Harris to ‘set the date’ for talks on recruitment crisis
- Lack of urgency progressively destroying the basic fabric of hospital services
- Number of patients last month waiting to see a hospital consultant increased to almost 565,000
- Government approach of ‘limping’ to next General Election failing our most vulnerable
#CARECANTWAIT campaigner Dr. Laura Durcan, Vice President of the IHCA: “The consultants of Ireland have come to a point where they have to stand up and say it’s not ok for patients to wait for years. None of this is ok, you should be able to access timely care.”
The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has today (Monday, 12 August) called on Minister Harris to set the date for talks to begin on resolving the current consultant recruitment and retention crisis.
Currently there are one in five or over 500 permanent consultant posts either empty or only temporarily filled across our health services.
Data published in April, by the Medical Council, revealed that 700 specialists had left the Irish health services over the years 2016 and 2017, with no evidence that this rate of brain drain has decreased in the interim.
Earlier this month, Minister Harris committed to commencing talks with consultant representative bodies next month. However, this pledge followed on from similar commitments made in October 2018 and again in March and April of this year, which have not yet resulted in any substantive talks.
The IHCA has cautioned against any further delays in these talks commencing, especially, because of the direct impact which the consultant shortage is now having on the delivery of health services.
The warning comes after figures released late on Friday afternoon show that the numbers of patients waiting to see a hospital consultant now stands at over 565,000 and has grown by an average of almost 7,000 additional patients joining the waiting lists each month since the start of the year.
Since 2014, the numbers waiting has grown by 200,000, equating to a 54% increase over the period.
The consultant recruitment and retention crisis is a significant factor in both the growth of the number of patients waiting to see a hospital consultant and the increase in the length of time they wait to get an outpatient appointment.
Equally, the consultant shortage is impacting across many other aspects of healthcare delivery.
Recently, Phase One of the National of the Children’s Hospital, the new Urgent Care Centre at Connolly Hospital, could not open on a full-time basis as originally planned. Due to a failure to recruit sufficient numbers of consultants to operate the Centre it has been forced to open for limited hours.
As part of the ongoing #CARECANTWAIT campaign, the IHCA has released a new video today (Monday, 12 August) featuring its Vice-President Dr. Laura Durcan, Consultant Rheumatologist. Dr. Durcan highlights the unacceptable wait times now being experienced by Irish patients.
According to Dr. Durcan: “...patients have learned to think that it’s okay to sit for years on a waiting list and the consultants of Ireland have come to a point where they have to stand up and say it’s not ok for patients to wait for years. None of this is ok, you should be able to access timely care.”
Two examples cited by Dr. Durcan include urology and dermatology wait times.
For urology, there are currently over 30,000 patients waiting to see a consultant and of these almost 13,000 have been waiting more than 12 months. While for dermatology, there are almost 46,000 patients waiting to see a consultant, with over 14,000 waiting more than a year.
There are many other examples with equally staggeringly high numbers of patients waiting such as cardiology with over 24,000 or gynaecology with more than 28,000 women waiting for a consultant appointment.
Commenting on the urgent need for Minister Harris to begin talks, Dr. Durcan commented:
“It’s almost a year since the commitment to sit down and resolve the consultant crisis was first given, with no progress yet made. It’s hard but to feel there is a lack of urgency around this issue, which is progressively destroying the basic fabric of hospital services.
The Government’s current approach of delay, in the hope of ‘limping’ to next General Election is unacceptable and is failing vulnerable patients.”
Public, patients and other stakeholders can follow the campaign and add their voices via Twitter by following #CareCantWait and through the IHCA website www.ihca.ie.
Support the IHCA campaign at: #CARECANTWAIT.
ENDS.
Link to #CareCantWait video featuring Dr. Laura Durcan, IHCA Vice-President and Consultant Rheumatologist: https://vimeo.com/353135298
For further information, contact:
Amanda Glancy| amanda@pr360.ie | 01 637 1777 | 087 2273108
Sarah Courtney|sarahc@pr360.ie | 01 637 1777 | 085 1700839