Cork University Hospital CEO stands by staff shortage comments, adding: ‘It is getting worse’

Cork University Hospital chief executive Jennifer Kearney said she “absolutely stands” behind patient-safety concerns she raised earlier this year, and warned on Saturday that “it is getting worse”.

Hospital staff vacancies are widespread, with some departments lacking a secretary, as well as medical professionals and nurses.

Ms Kearney said CT scanners are “gathering dust”. 

She described moving back to work in Ireland from the UK as “stepping back in time” in terms of infrastructure, funding, and complexity of hiring arrangements, as well as “the limited autonomy available to those responsible for delivering services”.

Ms Kearney addressed doctors at the annual conference of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association in Kilkenny.

Ms Kearney is about 15 months into her role at CUH, one of the largest hospitals in the country.

Letters she wrote to HSE leadership warning about gaps in care linked to staffing shortages caused controversy when they emerged in the media over the summer.

'It is getting worse'

“I absolutely stand by those concerns, and it is getting worse,” she said during a panel discussion chaired by former RTÉ broadcaster Byran Dobson.

Since then, she said there has been “no engagement” around those concerns.

Only seven posts have been approved for CUH, she said, and she warned the “gap is getting wider” between what is needed and what they have.

Winter is traditionally the time of greatest pressures for healthcare, but she said CUH staff feel “we never left winter” due to the unrelenting pressures this year.

She acknowledged CUH has hired new staff, saying more than 120 of these roles were for the new surgical hub.

 This opened recently, however she said due to employment restrictions placed on the hospital by the HSE, it is not yet running at full capacity. She called for discussion around the HSE’s national hiring policy, the pay and numbers strategy, saying it does not reflect needs.

Overspending on agency staff

Instead of hiring, she cautioned the hospital is instead “overspending” on agency staff.

This includes, she indicated, a higher spend now on hiring agency doctors since the new public-only contract for doctors offers a higher salary than was the case before 2023.

Ms Kearney also gave a speech to the conference, during which she detailed her decades working in the UK in the health system before returning to work in Ireland.

Despite her frustrations at the system, she said Ireland has doctors comparable to the best in the world, who are linked with top-class universities. 

The covid pandemic disrupted reforms, she noted, and called for a re-evaluation of costs needed to bring in the Sláintecare reforms. 

For example, she said an increase in supports for neuro-rehabilitation centres would help many patients currently delayed from going home from CUH as they wait on these kinds of support.

Ms Kearney also spoke of the need for more preventative medicine, starting with newborn babies and screening for genetic or rare diseases.

She called for a programme of genomic screening which would give families access to early intervention and services early in their child’s life when a disease is identified.