If people working in the public health system are “ingratiating themselves financially” they will be referred to An Garda Síochána, the HSE‘s chief executive has said.
Bernard Gloster said on Sunday that nobody had told him about an internal investigation at Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) which allegedly found a consultant abused the State’s waiting system while also delaying operations for sick children up to three years.
The Sunday Times reported that according to the unpublished findings, the consultant breached HSE guidelines by referring patients he was seeing in his public practice to weekend clinics he was operating separately.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s This Week programme, Mr Gloster said what was being reported was “absolutely shocking”.
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“I’m even more shocked because nobody has told me about it and, in light of everything we were doing in the last number of months for CHI, I’m just quite shocked.”
Mr Gloster said he had spoken to the CHI chief executive Lucy Nugent and has asked for a copy of the report, which “save for highly personal information . . . should be published in the public interest”.
“I have made it clear that I reserve my position based on what I see in that report as to whether or not further questions arise, and if any question arises, I assure you if anything connected with, or near connected with alleged people ingratiating themselves financially in the public health system, the first step I’ll be taking is to refer that matter to the gardaí,” he said.
Separately, Mr Gloster said Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill was considering “all of the issues” associated with the delivery and governance of children’s healthcare in the State.
He said the option of subsuming CHI back into the HSE “has to be” one of the moves considered.
CHI was established in January 2019 as a new entity to govern and deliver acute paediatric services and currently operates hospitals in Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght.
An independent audit published this week found that almost 500 children who underwent hip operations in two hospitals should be recalled, as close to 70 per cent of the sample examined were not necessary.
One child who received surgery for developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH), despite not meeting the criteria for the procedure, experienced an “adverse outcome” from the operation, the audit said.
CHI and the National Orthopaedic Hospital Cappagh (NOHC) last July announced a joint clinical audit to examine a random and anonymised sample of 147 DDH surgeries performed between 2021 and 2023. The move was prompted following a protected disclosure, which raised concerns that CHI at Crumlin and Temple Street and NOHC may have used differing criteria to determine whether the surgery was required.
Mr Gloster said there was no doubt the scale of variance the audit found was “of significant concern”. He said there would be further inquiries which would be beneficial to children and their families. He said he wanted to apologise to parents because of the concern they have due to “something that’s happening in the health service”.
In relation to the surgeons involved, Mr Gloster said he was not the employer as CHI and Cappagh hospital are “separate institutions under separate statute”. However, he said the “question of accountability cannot be taken off the table”.
“The audit itself would not be one which would ground or be grounding evidence to conclude that question, it is only after further inquiry that that could be fully assessed or not,” he said.
“So to be fair to individuals, we do have to be careful not to be precipitous in that regard. But it is a question that I want to be clear, that based on the level of extreme variation here, it is a question that has to be kept on the table until such time as we have a full view.”
