Following on from the recent news of X rays going unchecked by radiologists and written GP referrals being unattended to for up to two years a survey carried out by the Dublin South West branch of the Socialist Party a week before these scandals came to light reveal that the poor level of GP cover in Tallaght is causing an intolerable strain on its A&E which in turn has contributed to fines being imposed on the hospitals budget in successive years.

Mick Murphy, Dublin South West Socialist Party representative and former County Councillor for the Tallaght Central Ward commented:

“Tallaght Hospital has the busiest A&E in the Country with 78,843 visits recorded in 2007. The HSE ‘fine’ Tallaght every year over its ‘case mix’ which the hospital management say is skewed due to the extremely busy A&E. In 2009 Tallaght Hospital was fined €12million and for 2010 it has been fined €2.6million. The HSE use this perverted method of managing the hospital, starving it of resources to prevent it doing the job the hospital was built to do a little over 10 years ago.

“A door to door survey of 100 houses spread proportionately across Tallaght explains some of the reasons why the A&E is so busy” said Mick Murphy of the Socialist Party. “The survey was carried out between Saturday 27th February and Saturday 6th March by the local SP branch and shows that during out of hours 39% of people would go straight to A&E as against 31% who would use an out of hours GP and 20% who would rather wait to see their own GP . In some clinics you cannot get a same day appointment and in some cases even a next day appointment. This again drives people to crowd into the Hospital

“Tallaght has 26 GPs. The survey shows that 12% of Tallaght people have a GP outside of Tallaght. That means that on average each GP has 2,470 patients as against the national average of 1,672. Independent health analyst Marie O’Connor wrote in the Northern Standard recently that we have half the number of GPs per head of population of France, Austria and Germany. Therefore a GP in Tallaght has three times as many patients as a typical German, French or Austrian GP and even within Tallaght that is skewed with private patients in one part of the community clearly getting preferential care over medical card patients in another part. Limerick which is often compared in size to Tallaght has 58 GPs or 1,568 people per GP, still a high number.”

Mick Murphy’s Socialist Party colleague Joe Higgins MEP commented that:

“Tallaght Hospital is under huge additional pressure due to the proven lack of Primary Care services in the region it serves and for that it gets ‘fined’ by the HSE . Given that is the approach by the HSE then you cannot be surprised at the recent revelations in relation to radiology and X-ray’s not being properly examined and written GP referrals going unread for up to two years. The constant extreme pressure on the resources in Tallaght is bound to lead to problems and as with this latest scandal it will not be the last one given the reduction rather than increase in resources

“The people of Tallaght and the surrounding area have been active in defence of the Hospital, lead by the Tallaght Hospital Action Group but clearly more pressure is needed to defend the services at Tallaght and now I call on the Unions to mobilise their members both in the hospital and outside to prevent its members being compromised even further by the ongoing cuts in services.”

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