Protecting the Government's health
Two weeks ago, this column pointed out the curious coincidence of the Irish Medical Organisation conference and the Sunday Independent's "exclusive" front page story blaming doctors for the A&E crisis. Two weeks later, on 14 May, the lead story of the Sunday Independent was again an "exclusive" based upon the same consultants' report on the health service. This time the story coincided with the Irish College of General Practitioners conference and came the day before an RTE Primetime documentary which was sure to generate negative publicity about the state of the health service. Both stories were presented in such a way as to exonerate the Government of responsibility for the crisis. Both stories were similarly misleading. The front page story of 14 May carried a headline promising the "truth about our hospitals". This was supplemented by a full page summary of the consultants' report alongside a fawning profile of Health Service Executive (HSE) chief executive Brendan Drumm. The Sunday Independent presented the report as vindication of Mary Harney and Professor Drumm since it "did not find evidence of an A&E crisis".
And yet the minister recently declared A&E a "national emergency". Although the consultants reported that "every hospital claimed that more beds would ease the pressure on their A&E departments", they found that more beds would not "alone address the requirements for change" and identified a number of other reforms which could ease over-crowding.
Everybody agrees that there is a need for improved efficiency in hospitals, more community beds and better integration of services. Bed capacity is the thorny question. Ireland now has 2.98 acute hospital beds per 1000 population against a European average of 4.4 per 1000. In absolute terms, Ireland would require some 5,500 extra beds to reach the average. The Government's own healthcare strategy, published in 2001, set a target of 3,000 extra beds by 2011. There is a consensus among medical professionals, from consultants to nurses, that extra beds are a necessary part of the solution to the ongoing A&E crisis. The only dissenting voices are those of the HSE and the Minister for Health, who have refused to provide funding for extra capacity on the basis that there are sufficient beds, claiming that the crisis can be solved through a better exit process for patients alone.
Far from supporting the Government's position, the quotes from the report presented by the Sunday Independent imply an acceptance that more beds are required. Presenting the identification of additional problematic factors as a vindication of the Government's position is highly misleading.
The day after the Primetime documentary, the Irish Independent managed to outdo the misleading spin of its Sunday equivalent. It gave space for two medical professionals to express their opinions .
Rather than inviting a spokesperson of any of the representative bodies, the space was given to two individuals who expressed opinions entirely opposite to those of their professional bodies and entirely consistent with those of the Government. Both articles essentially blamed GPs for the crisis. Neither article mentioned bed capacity. The first piece was by a nurse, Florence Horsman-Hogan, founder of LOVE, who was made famous by her suggestion that many of those claiming to have been abused in religious institutions were "affected".
The second piece was by Dr Patrick Treacy. While his article did mention his experience working within public hospitals and the fact that he is medical director of Ailesbury Clinics, it neglected to mention that Dr Treacy specialises in providing cosmetic surgery to private patients in Ballsbridge and is thus in a uniquely bad position to articulate the concerns of public sector doctors.p