HEALTH SERVICE management was warned more than seven years ago about a shortage of full-time radiologists in the northeast and the fact that, as a result, a substantial amount of work had to be carried out by locums, it has emerged.
It was also warned that heavy workloads for staff left little or not time for work to be audited.
The revelation comes just days after the Health Service Executive (HSE) announced a review of more than 6,000 chest X-rays and 70 CT scans reported on by a locum consultant radiologist who worked at hospitals in Drogheda and Navan from August 2006 to August 2007.
The review has followed the discovery that lung cancer in four patients was not picked up by the radiologist when he reported on their chest X-rays. The four patients have since died.
Now it has emerged that in a letter to management of the Louth/Meath Hospital Group in November 2001, a doctor in the region warned that the number of full-time radiologists in Drogheda was “wholly inadequate” for the workload and that “mistakes will be made”.
The letter said: “We are now in a situation where substantial amounts of routine radiology reporting is being provided by three locums”. It said two of them lived outside the State. “The unwillingness to fund proper staff for radiology is the core of the problem,” the letter said.
It also pointed to shortages in radiology staffing at Navan hospital and said: “The intolerable workloads mean that teaching, administration and audit activities by the radiologists have all had to be discontinued in recent months. For hospitals with teaching responsibilities this is simply a disgrace.”
The letter was obtained by the Louth Fine Gael TD Fergus O’Dowd who said yesterday it showed management was aware for years about problems such as short-staffing, over-dependence on locums and lack of audit, which could pick up errors quickly.
He said the letter indicated the situation was critical in 2001 and it is now clear the service was still dependent on locums in 2006/2007. Management had also been made aware of the need for audit after the Lourdes Hospital Inquiry in 2006, he added.
Asked yesterday if the radiology service in the northeast is still dependant on locums the HSE said there is always a need for locums to cover short-term absences but this is not an issue now in radiology in the Louth/Meath hospital group.
The HSE has admitted that audit still has to be improved.