A damning failure to act in Portlaoise

My Medical Independent column from 23 July 2015 on why the HSE and Department of Health failed to act, given that they knew certain Portlaoise services were dangerous a year before the HIQA report.

An internal, unpublished HSE report, titled the Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise Performance Diagnostic Report, was obtained by the Medical Independent through a Freedom of Information request. It was cited regularly in the HIQA Portlaoise report, which investigated the safety, quality and standards of services in Portlaoise following the RTÉ Investigations Unit exposure of a series of babies’ deaths there.

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From here to maternity

Recent Medical Independent column from 11 June 2015 on the urgent need for change in maternity services.

For anyone interested in learning how our health system fails people, there is no greater lesson than listening to testimonies at the Oireachtas Health Committee from parents whose babies died in Portlaoise.

Varadkar and O’Brien’s biggest test: to deliver safe maternity services

My analysis of Portlaoise HIQA report in the Irish Independent on 16 May 2015
Five babies died in Portlaoise Hospital between 2006 and 2013. The maternity unit was unsafe, with insufficient frontline clinical staff, under-resourced to cope with the complexity of care required. Had lessons been learnt from previous HSE inquiries into Portlaoise and Hiqa reviews into Ennis and Mallow hospitals between 2007 and 2010, babies’ lives could have been saved.

HSE and HIQA must ensure it’s safe to give birth in all Irish maternity units

Op ed from the Irish Independent on 31 March 2015 on the ugly spat between HIQA and the HSE 

Cuts threaten patient safety

Fewer nurses caring for more patients increases likelihood of death, see here for column from Medical Independent from 21 March 2014.