Independent TD for Waterford Matt Shanahan has been reacting to the fact that 9,000 procedures at UHW have been outsourced since 2017, as was reported in this week's Waterford News and Star.
Speaking to WLR's Jordan Norris, Deputy Shanahan described University Hospital Waterford as grossly underfunded for a Category 4 hospital. "We have a budget deficit short of €66 million, compared to Limerick, which is a hospital of a similar scale. But Limerick treats 100,000 less patients and Limerick also has 700 more care staff than UHW."
When put to him that Pandemic fatigue is putting a huge strain on staff, Deputy Shanahan said that losing a staff member in UHW has a far more significant effect across the board, because the hospital has a lower quantity of staff per patient to begin with.
"It's a simple fact of resourcing and until we get a regional hospital budget in this region nothing is going to change. It can't be better without the adequate level of resourcing. That means money and that means new people taken on to work in the service."
Money not trickling through to Waterford in latest budgets
Deputy Shanahan said UHW has seen no "appreciable headcount in the key specialty areas" which he believes is compounding the issue of outsourcing procedures.
He says this is also evident when it comes to Cardiac Care. "I have parliamentary questions return to me to show there's been no recruitment in terms of the technical people to the cardiac team since 2018, long before Covid. Unfortunately it's business as usual to a large degree in terms of the treatment at UHW."
Track record of efficiency at UHW
Deputy Shanahan praised the efficiency at the hospital in Waterford despite what he sees as a severe lack of funding.
UHW has been one of the most efficient category 4 hospitals in the country for many years. If you go back to the mortuary issue, we saw four pathologists in Waterford doing 600 post-mortems, and 18 pathologists in Cork managing to do 800. And we see similar types of metrics across other disciplines. We have excellent staff, not getting the resources they need.
"Inadequate ICT systems"
Matt Shanahan also lashed out at the fact that the HSE lacks ICT systems which can communicate from hospital to hospital, saying he's been banging this drum for years. "Reports don't get to the simple nub of it; 'how many beds do you have?' 'How many healthcare people do you have?' 'How many patients get through that system every year?' We have the most efficient hospital in the country but when you look at the resourcing, we have the lowest number of all the model 4s in the country. And that has to change"
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