Mayo is not a safe place to get seriously ill this winter because the ambulance service is undergoing huge cutbacks.
Lives in Mayo, and across the west region, are at risk, because the HSE have introduced cost-cutting measures. These include significant cutbacks in overtime and where absenses occur at short notice shifts will not be covered and in some situations ambulances stations will be closed. The use of private ambulances will also be eliminated by the HSE and the outlook for 2009 is no better according to HSE West chief ambulance officer Ray Bonar. Mr Bonar has issued a memo to staff that €100,000 must be saved this month and again next month, leaving shifts without proper ambulance cover and crews short-staffed, therefore unable to answer emergency calls. There will be occasions where staff may not be paid while on sick leave, and annual leave will be restricted.
This week and last only one ambulance crew was rostered on in Castlebar for the night shift, at a station where there are normally two, the second crew having been sent to cover in Roscommon last week and Ballina this week, where their own staff have been left at home.
The Mayo Advertiser has learned that there are staff available to cover these shifts but the HSE won’t pay them overtime and the reason they need to work overtime in the first place is because there aren’t enough permanent staff to cover the necessary shifts. As a result of these cutbacks the west region is now seriously under-serviced.
The Mayo Advertiser has seen proof of where shifts have been cut back. On Monday November 10, Castlebar was two shifts down. On Tuesday of last week the county town was three shifts down, it was the same again on Wednesday with the town two shifts down again on Thursday. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday Castlebar was three, two and one shift down respectively while on Saturday night, from 10pm to 11pm there was no cover at all in Castlebar.
What compounds this situation is the fact that there were professional boxing matches taking place in Breaffy House International Sports Hotel, where the Order of Malta provided medical cover, but for a full hour there was no professional ambulance service in the town.
This week there was one shift down on Monday, one on Tuesday, two on Wednesday and two yesterday (Thursday
It has got to the stage where voluntary Order of Malta members have been contacted to transport patients from Mayo General Hospital. Last week an Order of Malta person was called to Mayo General to bring a patient to Louisburgh. While at the hospital, this voluntary, unpaid medic was asked to bring a second patient to Ballina who had been waiting hours for an ambulance but there were none available.
These are calls that should be covered by HSE ambulance crews but cutbacks mean there aren’t enough crews on duty to service the county.
Heads must roll
Castlebar Independent Councillor Michael Kilcoyne is outraged. “It is impossible to operate an emergency service by reducing expenditure by €100,000 per month,” he told the Mayo Advertiser. “Lives are going to be lost. These ambulance crews are professional people, highly trained, who are being left at home. In some cases unpaid volunteers have had to leave their jobs and man community ambulances to bring patients to hospital and transfer patients between hospitals,” he outlined. Wanting answers, the outspoken independent politician has called for heads to roll. “Senior management in the HSE have to be made personally responsible for the decisions they are taking. If there are fatalities as a result files on these matters should be sent to the DPP. Until this happens things will never change in this country,” he added.
The cuts are having a knock-on effect. Patients attending the Medical Assessment Unit at Mayo General Hospital and other day wards are being admitted to hospital because there is no ambulance cover to take them home or back to their nursing homes meaning beds are being clogged up.
People’s lives are seriously at risk.
When a night duty crew are on their own in Castlebar they have to cover an area from Castlebar to Ballaghaderreen, Louisburgh to Shrule, the whole of Achill island and into Leenaun.
Yesterday (Thursday ) one paramedic whose shift started at 9am was told at 9.30am to go to Roscommon to cover a shift where there was only one Roscommon paramedic on duty.
This time last year there was one person working in the ambulance control office in Castlebar. This week there were seven agency staff working in the same office as well as two paramedics on administration duty in another office who could have been on the road answering emergencies.
What makes matters worse is the fact that the computerised control system, which is worth millions, is not functioning properly and paramedics are getting information about call-outs on scraps of paper with limited information. Staff have stressed that this is not the fault of the people working in the centre, but the fault of a computerised system that is failing them.
Despite all this, the HSE are denying that cutbacks are being made.
