CUH consultants tell Taoiseach that CUH risks losing more staff amid criticism from health minister

Cork University Hospital (CUH) risks losing more staff if the health minister continues criticising the hospital rather than helping it, clinical directors have told the Taoiseach.

Nine clinical directors of CUH this week wrote a letter to Taoiseach Micheál Martin about the ongoing concerns in the hospital. 

The move comes after a letter from the hospital’s chief executive, Jennifer Kearney, to HSE management highlighted grave staffing concerns that made headlines in August.

The consultants asked the Taoiseach to hold health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeil to account for making “misleading” comparisons to other hospitals and mischaracterising CUH’s performance, while fundamental staffing problems have not been resolved.

They criticised the figures she had used to repeatedly claim that CUH has hired more people than it was allowed to, saying that the staffing limit does not include nearly 650 posts approved by the HSE.

The payroll count also includes staff “who do not work in CUH” and nearly 230 on long-term sick or maternity leave.

The consultants stressed the need to recruit for 172 posts prioritised by hospital management, only seven of which have been approved, and called for an independent assessment of the full staffing picture.

They claim staffing restrictions are visible in reduced diagnostic capacity, delayed procedures, beds that cannot be brought into service, equipment that cannot be used, and the closure of the hospital’s pulmonary function laboratory.

They say the lab remains shut because employment controls have prevented a staff member who has already been recruited from taking up the post.

The clinicians said their staff “are holding this hospital together through additional shifts, overtime, flexibility, and extraordinary goodwill”. 

They said it was “deeply demoralising” for staff to hear the hospital criticised by the minister while they were working so hard.

“Publicly undermining the work of a hospital, while failing to resolve the workforce issues its leaders have formally raised, makes it harder to retain experienced professionals and recruit the people required to sustain services,” they said.

The clinical directors asked the Taoiseach to meet with them urgently, saying that the public “should not have to wonder whether the Government is more concerned with defending a public statement than with establishing the truth about the hospital".

Additional assessment of hospital

It comes as Ms Carroll MacNeill confirmed that Hiqa will do an additional assessment of the hospital, though she declined to say whether she would consider the consultants’ request from for an independent assessment of staffing.

The minister insisted there are no safety concerns identified at the hospital, and that visits by the national patient safety office, and HSE chief clinical officer after Ms Kearney raised concerns found “no increase in the number of incidents being reported, no category one concerns, no increase in terms of mortality risks or the register in any way".

She also reiterated that the region has seen “a very significant increase in the permanent workforce” including at CUH and this has to be “tempered over time to make sure that it is done within the budget the Oireachtas has given it".

Cork Social Democrats TD and former CUH staff member Liam Quaide said there has been “a sustained pattern of scapegoating CUH management for problems arising from government restrictions on recruitment” from Ms Carroll MacNeil.

“The minister's repeated, decontextualised browbeating of CUH management is the opposite of leadership,” he said.

“Leadership means taking responsibility, confronting uncomfortable evidence, and creating conditions in which people can raise legitimate concerns without fear of being publicly discredited.

“It does not mean repeatedly setting hospitals against one another while deflecting attention from decisions made by her government that are undermining services.” 

The letter was also addressed to Fianna Fáil’s Seamus McGrath, who told The Echo that he fully acknowledges “the serious concerns raised by medical staff at CUH around resources and staffing levels”, recognises that they need urgent attention, and will be actively following up on them.

The Taoiseach did not respond to a request for comment.