Consultants warn "patients may die"

Patients may die if plans to reconfigure Emergency Department services at Navan hospital proceed from next Monday (12th December), according to senior medics in Drogheda.

The stark warning has been laid out in a letter from 17 consultants in Drogheda hospital to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly.

In it the consultants state the plans represent a repeat of history with no frontloading of adequate services and that they deem “implementation of the plans to be unsafe” and that “patients may die.”

A current deficit of 16 doctors in Drogheda is highlighted in the letter and that “no new additional appointments have been filled in medicine to facilitate the additional anticipated demand from Navan.”

Senator Shane Cassells, has called on both Minister Donnelly and the Taoiseach to intervene and halt plans to transition.

“Unless the HSE have a direct line to the North Pole and get Santa to deliver them 16 new doctors, a load of beds and the resources required for the additional patients coming from Navan then we are looking at chaos being unleashed in Drogheda this Christmas,” slammed Senator Cassells.

“The HSE might have nothing but contempt for politicians but the consultants in Drogheda care about the patients and I have called on Minister Donnelly and the Taoiseach to override their decision.”

The consultants have also stated that reconfiguration should not be planned to coincide with the middle of winter, Christmas closures of many community clinical services, and on the cusp of the changeover of non-consultant hospital doctors.

In hard hitting language they tell Minister Donnelly that they have “no doubt that you do not want to be associated with any adverse patient outcomes, or to replicate the mistakes of previous reconfigurations.”

The issues around Navan hospital hit the headlines again on Monday of last week when staff were briefed by management that updated ambulance bypass protocols had been signed off on and that critically ill patients would now bypass Navan and go to other hospitals.

Senator Cassells has said that there now needs to be a full rethink of that plan and that the engagement called for by the consultants needs to happen as a matter of urgency.

“The brave consultants that have come forward have blown the HSE spin out of the water and shown that there assurances about resources are the stuff of fairytales,” he said.