Tallaght Hospital in Dublin has been told to make up its mind within seven days about whether it wants a co-located private hospital on site or it could lose the project and have to pay some of the costs associated with it.
The warning was conveyed to the hospital in a letter from the Health Service Executive last week.
The Irish Timeshas learned that the letter was discussed at a hospital management team meeting last Tuesday and minutes circulated to staff afterwards detailed the threat.
The minutes stated: "Correspondence from the HSE was noted and will be brought to the attention of the board. The HSE have advised the hospital that it has seven days to indicate its commitment to the project otherwise the HSE reserve the right to exclude AMNCH [ Adelaide and Meath and National Children's Hospital] from the process forthwith and to recover associated bid costs incurred by the HSE to date for the site."
Tallaght hospital is one of eight public hospitals on which the HSE wants private co-located hospitals built in order to implement a Government plan to free up 1,000 public hospital beds. The private patients who normally occupy these beds would, under the plan, transfer to the new private hospitals on site.
However the plan has been criticised by many including a board member of Tallaght Hospital, Dr Fergus O'Ferrall, who claimed it would entrench the existing two-tier system of hospital care and make it all the more difficult to change that system in the future.
However the hospital's medical board is understood to be largely supportive of the plan as a result of a serious ongoing shortage of beds in the hospital.
The HSE has now invited tenders from developers willing to build private hospitals on seven public hospital sites.
The tenders from those willing to build at Waterford Regional Hospital, Sligo General Hospital, Limerick Regional Hospital, Cork University Hospital and St James's and Beaumont hospitals in Dublin are now being evaluated while tenders were sought just last week from those willing to build a private hospital on the grounds of Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, Dublin.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the directive issued to the HSE by the Department of Health in 2005, in relation to the terms and conditions on which co-located hospitals should be built, was amended two months ago. In July 2005, the secretary general of the Department of Health, Michael Scanlan, said the HSE should only accept proposals "where the consultants accept that there would be no question of them having to be compensated for the transfer of their private beds to the private facility".
The HSE told the department earlier this year it would not be able to meet this requirement given the fact that the consultant contract talks had broken down.
Mr Scanlan in an April 18th amendment to his earlier direction said this should not be a barrier to the HSE inviting tenders.