Mayo View: The buck must stop somewhere in addressing poor healthcare standards

It is a source of tremendous concern that the HSE has now reached a point where it is in agreement with criticisms of its hospitals overcrowding crisis rather than offering hope of a resolution.

During the course of a debate at the most recent meeting of the HSE West Forum, Mayo Councillor Michael Kilcoyne was informed that over 1,600 patients spent time on trolleys or chairs in Mayo University Hospital over a three-month period between November 2022 and January 2023 and the maximum wait time before a bed was allocated was five days.

When Councillor Kilcoyne described the statistics as an indictment on the fact there are not enough beds at the facility and the emergency department is not big enough to keep people moving through, the HSE official with responsibility for the Castlebar centre agreed.

The chief executive of the Saolta Group of Hospitals, Tony Canavan, accepted there are far too many waiting and it is all to do with beds and the size of the department and capacity of the unit.

“I agree it is a serious indictment."

This would suggest, rightly or wrongly, that the HSE itself is left in limbo in terms of addressing problems within the healthcare system.

It points, rightly or wrongly, to a disconnect between those running the service and those responsible for spearheading and financing the necessary changes.

Yet when members of the Oireachtas table parliamentary questions in respect of concerns about their local hospitals or other healthcare facilities, they are automatically told by the Minister for Health or one of his junior ministers that the question is to be referred to the HSE as the body responsible.

So where does the buck stop as far as Irish healthcare is concerned if problems are being consistently kicked between the Department of Health and the HSE - and vice-versa?

It would be easy to assume that this is some type of civil service tactic to delay the tackling of important issues for as long as possible or being forced into it by the court of public opinion.

When it comes to the problems at Mayo University Hospital, public outrage over many years has failed to deliver results and our elected representatives appear to have washed their hands of it because they realise results won’t be forthcoming in which the HSE and the department are hiding behind one another.

It’s clear the situation is in a very dangerous place and, politically, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have the most to lose for handling of the matter.

Yes, consistent governments have thrown a great deal of money at the problem but have not been vigilant enough in overseeing how it was spent.

It’s a mess.

A sad, depressing mess.