At least 180 extra beds will have to be provided at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda if all acute services are to be transferred there from hospitals in Navan and Dundalk, a team of British consultants has found.
PA Consulting, which was asked by the Health Service Executive to examine the bed-capacity implications of its plan to move extra services to Drogheda, made a presentation last November to those involved in the Northeast Transformation Programme.
Details of the presentation are only now coming into the public domain. Informed sources say HSE managers were taken by surprise as chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm has insisted the State is already massively equipped with hospital beds.
PA found that the 180 beds were required in Drogheda at a minimum, but even more than that may have to be put in place.
In an interview with The Irish Times in December Prof Drumm said many beds currently in the system were used inappropriately and this had to change.
"In terms of Drogheda in general we don't have a demand for a huge increase in beds. What we have to do in Drogheda if we're going to bring care into Drogheda - and this is part of the present planning process for all critical care to be brought into Drogheda and all acute care to be on either the Drogheda or Cavan site - then we have to free up beds there by moving other patients and other work to other sites," he said.
The HSE is also planning to move acute medical services from Monaghan General Hospital to Cavan Hospital. It is understood that PA Consulting found Cavan could cope with this workload without significant numbers of extra beds.
The HSE now plans to have all acute medical services transferred to Drogheda from Navan and Dundalk by mid-2009.
The plan to reorganise acute hospital services in the northeast comes on foot of a June 2006 report from another firm of British consultants, Teamwork, which found patients are being put at risk by the way hospital services are currently organised and delivered in the northeast.
It has now emerged progress in the transformation may again be slow this year due to lack of funding. In a message to staff just days ago, programme manager Stephen Mulvaney said the 2008 estimates made no specific provision for the investment expected in the northeast transformation.
Mr Mulvaney, who is also the HSE's assistant national director of finance, said the focus now had to be on reconfiguring existing resources but this did not change the objectives of the programme.
"However it does require an adjustment in how we approach and sequence the changes," he said. "It is also the case that regardless of any resource issues we are behind schedule in terms of completing the detailed planning phase of the programme."