A + E FARCE

Some years ago, during Michael Martin’s brief on Health, a well-known orthopaedic surgeon told a group of chaps a story about St. Vincent’s Hospital, which encapsulates the farce that has made the A+E such a mess.

He instructed the duty nurse to put a patient in a splint and send him home.

What he didn’t realise, until he found the patient squatting in a bed a week later, was that St. Vincent’s, responding to a supposed cost-cutting directive from the Department of Health, had no splints in stock. Accordingly, under the regulations in force at that time, they had to seek three competitive quotations for the splint!!!

Don’t laugh.

Two quotations arrived – the third being unable to quote, and Fannins, the specialist suppli er of surgical aids, were duly given the order.

The cost. €1.45!

All the while, a bed was being occupied by a man who had been discharged the previous week. At god knows how many hundreds of Euros per bed day.

So, it might be timely for Liam Doran; RTE & The Irish Times to ponder these words and reflect.

Beds are not the problem.