The nation is "very puzzled" that the State can build and provide facilities for Tallaght Hospital "but not provide the revenue expenditure to open and run them properly," the chairman of the Adelaide Hospital Society has said.
This was especially surprising at a time when there was no pressure on State funds, as in the past.
Prof Ian Graham was speaking at the annual general meeting of the society, which supports the Tallaght Hospital and fosters a liberal medical ethos which allows each patient to be treated "as they would wish".
Prof Graham said the new hospital still had not obtained the finances necessary to open major elements such as the outpatients extension, geriatric day hospital and cardiac catheterisation unit.
He also protested at how changes in the hospital's paediatric services had been "insensitively announced", appearing to "threaten the care of children in our hospital". This referred to a decision by the Department of Health to centralise childhood leukaemia services in Crumlin hospital.
The hospital has been forced to seek an £8.5 million bank loan to cover the shortfall on this year's budget, its first year of operation in Tallaght as an amalgamation of the old Adelaide, Meath and National Children's Hospitals.
Prof Graham said "the struggle of the hospital since it opened last June may appear to be mainly about under-funding of our services. There are many who fear that the State is uncomfortable with fully supporting a major new voluntary hospital with a distinctive set of values, and that a long-term objective of the State is to fully control health services and hospitals, using the resource dependency which voluntary bodies necessarily have on State funds.
"The inexorable pressures on the board of this hospital and the close external scrutiny of our governance and management, which we have had to endure almost since we opened, does lend credence to such fears about the intentions of the State," he said.
The Adelaide Hospital Society's only interest was in proper patient care. "Why build facilities and then prevent them from functioning by starving them of finance?" he asked. "With public support this hospital will become a university teaching hospital of which the country will be proud."
In his written chairman's report, Prof Graham also expressed "major concerns" about the Eastern Regional Health Authority Bill. He said it would "introduce at least another layer of bureaucracy into what is already a very top-heavy health service management structure."
Protection of the Adelaide's ideals in the hospital was "scanty and inadequate. The hospital's national responsibilities are not adequately acknowledged in the legislation. The legislation does not acknowledge that teaching hospitals incur additional costs."
However, he said the society would put aside its "misgivings" to "give the new authority and the new area health board the support and opportunities any new structures need to prove themselves, by leading to improved health services for patients."