GENERAL PRACTITIONERS from Co Clare and Co Tipperary said yesterday they would not support the Health Service Executive (HSE) plan to overhaul acute hospital services in the midwest.
This follows a meeting between HSE management and 80 GPs from the counties in Limerick city.
In the first phase of the overhaul the HSE is aiming to end 24-hour AE services at Ennis and Nenagh general hospitals in April, and centralise services at Limerick’s regional hospital.
The HSE’s plan envisages that many of the patients that would be admitted to AE can be treated by the GP co-op Shannondoc.
However, in a four-page statement released yesterday by the GPs from the two counties, they said when a vote of confidence was called for on the HSE plan at the meeting, not one hand was raised.
Ahead of a protest rally in Nenagh this Saturday – and plans being made for a similar march in Ennis – the GPs claim that a senior HSE official at the meeting described Limerick regional hospital as “dysfunctional” and that the recently-published “Teamwork report” was no longer the blueprint for change and that a yet-unpublished plan was being prepared by the implementation team.
The GPs say they do not believe the principle of the Teamwork report will be adhered to that no acute service will be withdrawn from the general hospitals until the regional centre is resourced.
The GPs claim the new HSE plan “is not available for public examination or analysis”, and this is an unacceptable way to implement change.
The GPs also say the HSE admitted at the meeting that the overhaul of services in the north-east has been “a disaster” and that they “fear that the midwest will suffer a similar fate”.
They say that prior to the overhaul of services neither community-based support services nor hospital-based replacement services in Limerick will be in place.
“When AE services are removed from Ennis and Nenagh, with all acute surgery bypassing these hospitals, the already overstretched ambulance service will be overwhelmed.”
The GPs say they find it incredible that the HSE is proposing to close down beds in Ennis and Nenagh when it is obvious that the entire system is short of beds.
