Irish patients suffer health service 'without a heart'

Europe Features

Nov 18, 2007, 14:07 GMT

Dublin - 'A department without a heart,' is what advocacy group Patients Together calls Ireland's health department, which has presided over a cancer misdiagnosis fiasco that has galvanized the country in recent weeks. In the latest scandal to hit the health services, it has emerged that after 3,000 mammograms were taken at the midlands Portlaoise Hospital, seven women were erroneously given the all-clear. 'Initially, we heard how human error caused the problem. This gave people a sense of relief. Then as the situation further evolved, we learned how there were problems with dirt, with 16-year-old machines,' says Janette Byrne who founded the patients advocacy organization in response to how she and her mother were treated at Dublin hospitals. 'There were problems that prevented people from doing their jobs properly and which the department was told about,' she says. Ironically, the cancer misdiagnosis scandal unfolded after the director of nursing at Portlaoise raised concerns about 10 'false positive' mammograms in August. The Health Service Executive (HSE), the agency responsible for Ireland's health service, then terminated breast radiology services at Portlaoise, placed a consultant radiologist on administrative leave and set up a review of all breast radiology diagnoses at the hospital from November 2003 to August 2007. After it emerged that seven women whose mammograms were reviewed were diagnosed with breast cancer, the Irish media, baying for HSE blood, revealed that a surgeon in the hospital had expressed concerns about radiological service as far back as July 2005. He had particularly pinpointed inexperienced staff. 'Any sniff of cover-up in relation to cancer makes people angry,' says Byrne. 'People are angry that HSE officials are willing to sit on information that can cause death. The whole fact that women were waiting for results and they got the wrong results which delayed treatment makes people very angry.' Byrne, who when she was a cancer patient in Dublin's Mater hospital ended up taking the service to court, is keen to emphasize that the latest furore is just one symptom of the well-advanced health service malaise. 'Patients are devastated and are getting it from every angle; overcrowded Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments, patients on trolleys, hygiene problems. 'We were promised that hygiene would be sorted out, but we still get calls every day from patients about things as basic as dirty bathrooms, handwashing facilities and towels,' she says. 'People suffer as a result of cancelled operations, waiting for biopsy results, shortages of GPs. In some areas, in the main cities, there is such a shortage of GPs that you cannot get an appointment the same day.' Byrne's personal dealings with the health service were characterized by fear, waiting and anger. 'I was told I would be having chemotherapy after being treated for cancer of the lymph system. But while I was visualizing the cancer returning, I sometimes had a wait of three days and once nine days for chemotherapy. Although I was booked in for chemotherapy on a particular day, I had to ring up on the day and see if there was a bed available.' Byrne's negative experience was revisited when she watched her mother spend three-and-a-half days on a trolley because of a bed shortage, which she considers is the worst problem in the health service. 'In a restructuring of the health service three years ago, 3,000 beds were lost to the system and not enough have been replaced. There hasn't been an improvement in the problem of patients waiting on trolleys, which is really high at the moment,' she says. 'Sometimes, in Dublin even plastic chairs in Accident and Emergency departments are full and ambulances can't get people in hospital, so they have to wait too. God forbid there is ever a train crash or an emergency situation,' she says. John Kidd, an ambulance driver, employed by Dublin Fire Brigade which operate 12 of 15 ambulances in the Dublin area for the HSE, also pinpoints the lack of beds in the system. 'If we arrive at a hospital where there are no beds, we can wait up to two hours to move a patient into the hospital while calls are coming in,' Kidd says. He feels that there has been an enormous disimprovement in the service since he joined in the 1980s. 'There is big frustration within the service, members of the service are disgruntled with the service they are providing. In a review of the service carried out by the Chief Ambulance Officer in London, recommended that the number of ambulances be increased from 12 to 20, but nothing has been done,' says Kidd. According to Kidd, Ireland has one of the lowest rates of ambulance cover in the world and this along with the shortage of beds is creating an impossible situation. 'We sometimes have no ambulance to send out. Patients are definitely suffering,' he says. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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Dave M.Nov 19th, 2007 - 15:22:06

Our brain dead Democrats here in the USA want socialized health care. It has got to be the most stupid idea that I've heard. After so many bad stories from Europe and Canada, you would think that they would wise up.

Heck, we even had a bad example here in the USA from the Walter Reed army hospital and they still won't learn that government controlled health care is a disaster. Liberals are total idiots.

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RichGNov 19th, 2007 - 15:50:25

'Liberals are total idiots.'

Yeah but they mean well and isn't that the only thing that should count when making policy changes?

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RichGNov 19th, 2007 - 15:51:27

That previous post was sarcasm btw.

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Rudy GNov 19th, 2007 - 16:58:55

Democrats are successful because a lot of lower and middle class people want to be taken care of by the government instead of making better decisions and working smarter to earn a better lifestyle.

What these people don't don't realize is that government really only does two things well - take money and spend money. Their future healthcare may be free to them or heavily subsidized, but you usually get what you pay for.

The worst offender is Hillary - she not only wants socialized healthcare but to criminalize all private healthcare so one has no options, unlike education.

If all of this happens, US citizens will simply suffer more illness and death in the future as is currently being experienced in Europe and Ireland and unfortunately here in the US for our Veterans.

Ain't life grand?

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BryanCNov 19th, 2007 - 18:09:35

All socialized medicine has ever led, (anywhere it has been tried) is health rationing. This always leads to placing a fixed value on your health and a fixed value on what your 'contribution' can be to the tax machine. When you are too sick to contribute your labor, you'll be encouraged to 'do the right thing' and die like a good tax payer so you don't become a burden on the rest of us.

Don't you think it is a neat way to avoid paying out social security to the millions of baby boomers!?!

Only the people who don't need to use the system will pay and when you reach that magic age, you can't get back what you've paid into... Just like a battery that is tossed after it is expended, it has shades of Logan's Run, Soylent Green, and the Matrix all over this euthanasia rigged, control freak system.

Society has a strange way of immitating art.

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kimNov 19th, 2007 - 18:49:14

I would guess that the average American has not read these stories regarding the nightmare of Universal Healtcare. They do not understand that it is not Free and comes with a hefty pricetag and cost to all Americans. I think if everything was simplified that most people would be against it. I think more education is needed between now and the elections. We have to let people know what we would be giving up and that the government would have more say over us than ever before. This is more about control than healtcare. We need to protect our rights, but first we need to help the masses understand the constitution, how government functions, and more. Many schools have taught teaching these American principals. We must demand to know school curriculum as we are tax payers and fight to allow all of the PC stuff in schools. The more we cave the worse we will be and in the next 10 years we will regret not taking a stand.

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BarbaraNov 19th, 2007 - 20:24:55

kim....You talk about education being the key. The key is to get the federal government out of everything except what is enumerated in the Constitution. Catholic schools teach catholicism, Jewish schools teach Judaism so of course government schools teach socialism, or government is the answer. Schools and health care are not federal government responsibilities they are the people's responsibility.

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tonny from belgiumNov 19th, 2007 - 21:04:44

I don't know the Irish health system at all,but neither do the other posters .So I won't speculate on that,only understand that there is no single socialized health care system in Europe at all.I just read a nice story on this same site about some woman in California who's chemo against vreast cancer was stopped halfway as the result of a private insurance company encouraging it's staff to review and reduce contracts from the patients .Now that is heartless,and only possible in privatized health insurance .THe less you pay to the patients,the more money the company gains;handing out bonuses yo your employees for canceling contract terms is only profitable in private insurance .It is the standard operative manner of all insurance companies as demonstrated very well in Sicko.Sorry guys you fool nobody but yourselves....oooh ,and SP4 of course.

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MattNov 19th, 2007 - 22:54:16

And those who think 'sicko' was one hundred percent true. Are the same ones who believe 'Farenheight 911' was also all true.....until one checks out 'Farenhype 911' ... and see's all of the errors and falsehoods created by mikey bore...and his refusal to discuss his eroneous information....so keep on believing......and dreaming.....about shrillary and her universal doomcare program.

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DanNov 20th, 2007 - 05:39:52

Here in Australia we've made a couple of pretty good stabs at providing universal healthcare.

For many decades Qld was able to finance a free and excellent public hospital system from the proceeds of a (Exclusive State Licenced) Lottery. But that's when the guy in charge was religious and anti-gambling, so there were no pokies or casinos, and offcourse horse race betting was done via gov't Totalisator Agency Boards. So there was no shortage of health funding, there being no shortage of suckers who gamble. Not being remotely attracted to gambling, I reckon it was great system,

But alas, it's all being privatised and piratised now, and afu'ed along the lines of the US model thanks to the neo-con gov't we've had in here for over a decade, who are really only interested in shovelling vast amounts of taxpayers money to the right people, via outsourcing what used to be gov't services.

The private hospitals have a great racket whereby they cherrypick routine profitable procedures and the public taxpayer funded hospitals have to pick up the hard stuff and the overflow when patients overstay their welcome in private hospitals, then get tossed out cos they erode the private insurance companies profits, a la Sicko.

You can really stuff up a society with a decade of power, the one thing I'm jealous of of the US is their wisdom in limiting presidencies to 2 terms.

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waine UKNov 20th, 2007 - 17:44:49

I see all the postings here denegrating a public health service as being a sick idea, they should tell that to the estimated forty million people in the US who don't get any healh care because they can't afford to pay for insurance. that fory mil will look like chicken feed when the dollor drops through the floor together with American jobs. Lets see who wants a universal health system then. I notice these denegrators don't point out that even with health insurance they don't always get the treatment they require, the cost of treatment is calculated first to see if the premiums cover it. Here in the UK we get top quality health care free at the point of delivery. No lottery here.

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