If the Health Service Executive ordered hospitals to swab all their staff for MRSA, it could result in large numbers of them having to take time off because they would be found to be carriers of the bug, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.
Prof Brendan Drumm, the HSE chief executive, told the joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children that this could be "a huge fear" for hospitals.
He wondered if staff were swabbed, how many of them would immediately be taken out of the system.
He was replying to a question from Fine Gael's health spokesman, Dr Liam Twomey, who stated that when he was a doctor in training years ago all staff were swabbed for MRSA.
He claimed MRSA was endemic in our hospitals and was not being treated like an emergency. He suggested a security guard should be at the door of hospitals getting people to disinfect their hands as they arrived.
Prof Drumm said this was a good idea, pointing out that MRSA was also highly prevalent in the community and that it would not be possible to swab all people going into hospital.
It emerged at the meeting that the Health and Safety Authority had issued enforcement notices against 12 hospitals last year in relation to MRSA.
Dr Twomey read out a reply he received from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment on this matter: "In 2006 the HSA carried out a total of 148 inspections in the healthcare sector. As part of these inspections 13 hospitals were targeted nationwide focusing on the spread of MRSA and enforcement action was taken in 12 instances."
Prof Drumm said the HSE was working with the HSA now to make infrastructural changes to these hospitals.
He said MRSA was a huge challenge to the system and big issues which had to be addressed included the appointment of more pharmacists to control antibiotic use and to insist on good handwashing practices.
Minister for Health Mary Harney told the committee she had ruled out a redress scheme for those who picked up MRSA in hospitals and said legal actions would have to be dealt with on a "case-by-case basis".
On a separate issue, Labour's health spokeswoman Liz McManus said surgery was still being cancelled at St James's Hospital due to a lack of intensive care beds. Prof Drumm said the number of these beds in the system was being reviewed in the context of an overall review of acute bed capacity.
He added that contrary to the views expressed by some, improvements in A&E had not come at the expense of patients who required elective surgery.
He said numbers of elective procedures had actually increased in 2006, even though A&E attendances also increased. On the plan to recruit 1,500 consultants under a new contract, yet to be negotiated, he dismissed the claim these would have minimal impact unless extra hospital beds were provided.
"This suggestion is based on a model of healthcare we must leave behind," he said.
He also said the extra consultants would mean patients would be seen by senior clinical decision makers and diagnosed more quickly.
"The need for patients to be admitted will be reduced . . . patients who are admitted will be seen by senior clinical decision makers more regularly, at least once a day every day, have more rapid access to diagnostic services and, as a result, spend less time in hospital," he said.
Ms Harney confirmed meanwhile that screening under the BreastCheck programme would finally begin in the west in April.