Surgeon claims he is being paid to do nothing
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Friday November 06 2009
A team of three orthopaedic consultants, with combined salaries of about €675,000, has virtually no work to do at a busy hospital.
Senior consultant surgeon Peter O'Rourke has revealed he and two colleagues were being paid to sit around doing nothing while operating theatres were lying empty at Letterkenny General Hospital, Co Donegal.
"The Government is paying me a large sum of money to sit around doing nothing," said the bored surgeon, who earns around €225,000 a year, almost eight times the average industrial wage.
Despite lists of people in pain waiting for hip and knee replacements, the hospital has put off all so-called "elective" procedures until at least next year in a drive to save money. It has budget overruns of €2.7m.
Dr O'Rourke, who candidly pointed out that the patient was the real victim, said he was "frustrated and depressed" about the situation.
"I'm sitting here in my office looking out my window at a digger piling up clay on the site of the new emergency department when I should be at work in an operating theatre."
Dr O'Rourke said he could still perform day surgery every three weeks but was told there would be no elective surgery until the new year.
"There is no satisfaction working in the health service at present. I could go and work in a private hospital but that would necessitate me leaving Donegal, which is my home," he said.
He revealed that, since the beginning of the month, he and his colleagues had been cut back to performing surgery one day out of every two weeks, but restrictions were leaving them with neither beds nor staff.
"I have no wish to work as an agent for the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF). If I see new patients, they are put on to a list and once they are there three months, they move on to the NTPF list. That's not what I trained for," he said.
Frustration
He added that if the hospital was given adequate resources, it could treat its patients.
"The most frustrating thing of all is that people blame consultants because they believe we have some influence. We don't, but as the highest paid members of the health service, it's easy to always make us the whipping boys," he said.
So far this year, Dr O'Rourke and his colleagues have been limited to carrying out 125 hip replacements and 45 knee replacements although the demand is considerably greater.
Mary Tierney, a spokeswoman for the patient advocacy group Patient Focus, said any deferral of hip replacement surgery resulted in increased pain for the patient and additional costs to the health service.
"It is being penny-wise and pound-foolish," she said. "There is the added pain factor as well as the need for external help, time off work, additional medicines and the increased risk of the patient falling, which just puts further pressure on the system."
A HSE spokesperson said it had a legal obligation to remain within budget by the end of the year.
"It is the case that we are looking at different ways of doing that, and we are discussing these with our staff at the moment.
"We will be ceasing to do hip and knee replacements from our waiting list for a number of weeks.
"We are also attempting to increase the number of patients we can treat through our day surgery unit," she said.
She added that the possibility of further bed closures and a review of temporary staff contracts at the hospital could not be ruled out.
"As always, we will do our very best to minimise the impact on our patients," she added.
- Anita Guidera and Harry Walsh
Irish Independent
