The HSE tonight expressed disappointment over criticism it received in the Office of the Ombudsman's report that was published today.
The Office of the Ombudsman received a record number of complaints last year, including a number of "shocking" complaints about hospital treatment, according to its annual report. A total of 2,873 complaints were filed with the Ombudsman in 2009 - an increase of 86 -or 4.4 per cent - over the preceding year and the highest number for over a decade.
The civil service accounted for 41 per cent of complaints, local authorities 30 per cent and more than a quarter of the complaints were about the HSE or services run by it.
Some of the cases which came before Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly, particularly in the social services and public health care services areas, were "shocking and unacceptable", she said. Ms O'Reilly also accused the executive of being “riddled with excessive secrecy".
In a statement issued in response, the HSE said it wanted to emphasise its staff "make every possible effort to provide information to and co-operate with the Office of the Ombudsman with its investigations".
"However, due to the HSE's obligation to comply with laws designed to protect the rights of patients and clients, particularly in relation to childcare, it is not always possible to provide all of the information sought. This has occurred in a limited number of instances."
The HSE said it was "very disappointed" the Ombudsman "has chosen to so graphically characterise the obligation of HSE staff to comply with these laws as an attempt to block and suppress information". The organisation said it makes "every effort to be as transparent as possible in all areas and make as much information as possible available to the public".
The HSE confirmed the overall trend was an increase in complaints being made but added this was "in line with the organisation's efforts to encourage service users to express their complaints and compliments".
One of the cases reported by the Ombudsman involved a woman having a baby in a major Waterford hospital who was deprived of pain relief and was found after an investigation to have received neglectful care.
In another case she found the standard of care and treatment of a terminally-ill man in Tullamore hospital was poor. "I believed his wife when she told me that his prescribed anti-embolism stockings had not been changed for three weeks," she said.
In a further case, a woman admitted to hospital in Wexford for respite care had to stay in bed as the hospital had no suitable seating available. Her daughter also complained that she arrived home badly bruised after being in the care of the hospital.
And in a fourth case the care provided to a man at Beaumont Hospital was found to be abysmal. The man's daughter, said that on a bank holiday Monday her father, who was a cancer patient, was vomiting what appeared to be faecal matter and no medical person came to review him. He died ten days later.
"I am pleased that our intervention led to systemic change and hopefully no one else will have to go through such an appalling and distressing experience, either as a patient or relative," Ms O'Reilly said.
She also highlighted a separate case of a community care home resident whose husband got a refund of €8,381 from the HSE after she had been wrongly charged for her in patient care. "At my request the HSE agreed to initiate a review of all other persons, in similar circumstances, who were being assessed for in-patient charges for a spouse of an individual in receipt of a qualified adult payment. After the review the HSE paid out refunds to 81 families amounting to €407,000," she said.
She added that the recession may have been a factor in the increase in complaints against the civil service last year as a result of many more people trying to access social services than in previous years.
The number of complaints she received in 2009 "underlines the fact that significant numbers of people continue to have problems with the public service bodies and badly need our help," Ms O'Reilly added. Overall, 45 per cent of people who make complaints to the Ombudsman's office are better off as a result, she said.
The annual report shows that a total of 1,077 complaints made last year were outside the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman - a fall of 6.5 per cent when compared with 2008.
Following on from the recent controversy over the HSE's failure to hand over files of children who died in care to a review group, Ms O'Reilly accused the executive of being “riddled with excessive secrecy" and said it seeks at times to protects its own interests.
“You have the Government wanting information, the ministry, the parliament, the people, and the HSE said no,” she said.
“Even though I am 100 per cent certain that there were any number of legal mechanisms that could have allowed this information to get out.”
The Ombudsman said such records have been routinely released over the last 26 years to her office and elsewhere. “So there is something rotten within that system,” she said.