Beaumont Hospital: Four essential staff at Dublin's Beaumont Hospital have had to be funded by pharmaceutical companies because the State has refused to pay for them, it has emerged.
The jobs which have been funded by drug companies include those of a physiotherapist, a clinical nurse specialist, a speech therapist and a dietician.
Dr Orla Hardiman, director of neurology at the hospital, admitted yesterday it was shocking that pharmaceutical companies had to fund these posts which she said were essential to provide proper care to patients with multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease.
She said the hospital had presented evidence-based research to the Health Service Executive Eastern Region to show how valuable these posts were in the treatment of neurology patients but funding for them was not provided. The consultant neurologist said she had turned to pharmaceutical companies for help.
"This is not us just trying to expand willy nilly. There is evidence-based research to demonstrate we need these people. It is essential patients have these services for proper management," she said.
Dr Hardiman said while there was a lot of talk about the need for multidisciplinary services, there seemed to be no support for their development other than "verbal recognition of their value".
Asked if it was appropriate that drug companies fund such posts, she said patients would be denied services without them. "They are fulfilling an extremely important role at the moment in Ireland," she said.
The funding provided by the pharmaceutical companies was in the form of "unrestricted grants" which meant the money could be used to provide essential services, she said. She also emphasised the posts being funded were not prescribing ones.
Dr Hardiman said the hospital would much prefer if funding was provided by the State for these posts but this hadn't happened.
"Everybody knows how few neurologists there are and everybody speaks about the need to develop these services but when we go to get money to develop them we don't, so it's incredibly frustrating," she said.
She said more and more patients had to be treated by the neurology department at Beaumont every year but its budget wasn't increasing in line with the increased demands on the unit. The waiting time to see her, once a patient is referred by their GP, is now up to two years, she said.
"I, as director of neurology at Beaumont, have been told that there is no development budget for our service despite the well publicised inadequacies and inequities of our care. We are hobbling along with supplementary funding from pharmaceutical firms in an era of unprecedented wealth," she said.
The HSE Eastern Region said it was taking steps to improve neurology services. It said it approved funding for two new neurology posts at Beaumont at the end of last year. A neurophysiologist would also be appointed, a spokeswoman said.