Approximately 200 hospital consultants have received warning letters for breaches of their public/private work ratios, the HSE has confirmed. Consultants have nine months to bring their caseload within the ratio specified in their contracts. A joint committee involving the HSE, unions and the Department of Health, chaired by Maureen Lynott – which commenced work in [...]
HSE Chief Executive Prof Brendan Drumm has said the Executive plans to reduce the number of patients who enter hospitals through EDs to get a consultant opinion or access to diagnostics. Almost 20 per cent of patients admitted through EDs in 2009 spent less than 24 hours in hospital, and 30 per cent were there [...]
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Association (INMO) has serious concerns that all ambulance trauma cases will be diverted to Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda due to ‘severe overcrowding problems’ and ‘inadequate bed capacity’ in the northeast. Major trauma services at Navan will end from this weekend. From Friday at midnight, complex trauma patients [...]
The Department of Health has officially replied to the European Commission’s Letter of Formal Notice over Ireland’s failure to comply with the European Working Time Directive (EWTD). IMT has learned that Hawkins House met last week’s deadline to supply the Commission with a response to this first stage of infringement proceedings. In a series of [...]
The Chief Executive of the Health Service Executive (HSE), Prof Brendan Drumm, has pledged that long patient waiting lists ‘will disappear’ over the coming months. There has been a reduction of nearly a half in the number of people who are on long-term waiting lists, the HSE has claimed. Figures released to Irish Medical Times [...]
Beaumont Hospital has issued a warning to drivers that the Trim Road entrance to its campus will be closed for a week, from 7am on Monday, February 8 until 7am on Tuesday February 16. The closure is necessary because of building work on a major new radiotherapy unit. Normal visitor access to the hospital’s main [...]
Emergency department overcrowding isn’t getting better; it’s getting worse – much worse, according to the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine. Yesterday, on Today with Pat Kenny on RTE Radio 1, the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, declared that overcrowding had “very significantly improved” and there were just a small handful of “constant offenders” where overcrowding [...]
In what’s being called a breakthrough, a man who has been unconscious for five years was able to communicate with doctors using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a type of scan that allowed doctors to detect when the man changed thoughts. From the Irish Times: …The doctors scanned the man’s brain while he was asked to [...]
The number of hospitals showing 100 per cent of consultants in compliance with the public/private mix terms of their contracts has risen from two to seven in a month. These are Bantry, Mon-aghan, Roscommon, Tallaght, Naas, Dun Laoghaire and Loughlinstown. For the first time, the figures cover all of the consultants who have signed the [...]
The Lancet has now issued a full retraction of the paper, authored by Dr Andrew Wakefield, linking autism and MMR. The text of the retraction is available on the Lancet. Dr Wakefield, who now lives and works in the US, said the findings were “unjust and unfounded.” The Huffington Post has said “not so fast.”
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