‘Very significant’ increase in CUH workforce has to be ‘tempered’

The “very significant” increase in the permanent workforce at Cork University Hospital (CUH) and the south west region has to be “tempered” over time, the health minister has said.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said the south west region is “substantially over budget” because of the number of health staff recruited and the level of overtime.

It comes days after she singled out the hospital for its trolley numbers being so high despite having the “highest recruitment” among hospitals.

However, clinical directors at the CUH urged Taoiseach Micheál Martin to intervene and have an independent assessment of staffing needs at the hospital.

It was reported by the Irish Times that a letter was sent to Mr Martin in which they called for an urgent approval of 172 priority posts and for the staffing of 21 acute beds.

The chief executive of CUH, Jennifer Kearney, has repeatedly raised patient safety concerns at the hospital because of a lack of resources and job vacancies.

Speaking at an event in Dublin on Friday, the health minister did not say whether she would support bringing in an independent assessor.

She also said that the hospital has recruited more staff this year than any other hospital.

“The southwest region is one of those regions in escalation, precisely because it has gone above its budget in relation to the number of people that have been hired, the level of overtime, and the timing of agency conversion,” she added.

“They are substantially over budget and need to work within the budget that has been set, as the other regions have been doing.

“There has been very significant increase in the permanent workforce, both in the region and in CUH, and that is something that has to be tempered over time to make sure that it’s done within the budget that the Oireachtas has given it.

“That’s very, very important.”

The Fine Gael minister said that a report from the National Patient Safety Office and the chief clinical officer, who examined the hospital, said that the patient safety profile in Cork was stable.

She said: “When patient safety concerns were made public by the CEO, we in the Department of Health and I immediately contacted the National Patient Safety Office, the chief clinical officer, both of whom went to CUH, and tested and marked what has been happening in the hospital up until that point.

“What they found was that there was no increase in number of incidents being reported.

“There were no category one concerns.

“There was no increase in terms of the mortality risks, or that were registered in any way, but also that the more, if I may say, run-of-the-mill general things, the kind of things that happen when patient safety issues are escalating, so for example, missed medications or bedsores, none of those things were being escalated either.

“Now, may I preface that and say that every day in healthcare there are risks in every single hospital, but that’s why we have things like the safe staffing framework to make sure that we have the appropriate number of nurses for the kind of patients that are there.

“That’s why we have a national patient safety to track incidents.

“That’s why, of course, we have Hiqa, who is an independent assessor of patient safety, who had given a CUH the standard clean bill of health that you would expect a hospital of that quality to obtain, and of course Hiqa now on foot of the concerns being raised by the CEO will take an additional assessment in relation to CUH.”