Mental Health referrals for older people in Donegal have been cancelled for the past month due a consultant psychiatrist post not being.
The position has been officially vacant since the retirement of a consultant over two years ago.
The service, which is based in Letterkenny, is seen as a vital part of the wellbeing of many elderly people and is much in demand.
Meanwhile Cllr. Brogan has revealed the huge turnover of staff across six departments at the hospital over the past three years and the efforts to recruit replacement personnel.
From a compliment of 758 staff, a total of 63 have retired while the category ‘Staff Resigned’ is put at 537, said Cllr. Brogan.
Most of the retirements are temporary locum posts and many are in the nursing domain along with medical and dental.
Some of these posts remain to be filled due to the paperwork and compliance needed before replacements are found.
We asked the HSE to respond to concerns raised about the filling of the post with claims that the post had continued to remain vacant.
We sought information with regard to when the post might be filled amid concerns that nursing staff are coping with a very busy caseload in the absence of a permanent consultant.
The Tirconail Tribune sought information on what plans are in place to refer clients elsewhere within the HSE West region.
It is understood that another psychiatrist had taken on the role for a period as ‘a stop-gap’ measure along with his own workload. However, that has now stopped due to the consultant taking on a new and more senior role in the service of mental health in Donegal.
Confirming the cancellation of new referrals to the service HSE West has confirmed that as of November 1st. no new referrals are being accepted at the Donegal Mental Health Services due to shortage of consultants.
HSE says these are temporary measures in Mental Health Services for Older People.
A spokeswoman for the HSE said: “No new patient referrals can be accepted by the service at the present time.
A waiting list for processing the existing referrals will be set up.
The Mental Health Service for older person’s team will continue to manage their current case loads of existing patients.
Old Age Psychiatry emergencies will be dealt with by the Psychiatric on call service.
All Donegal GPs have been informed of the temporary service changes and advised accordingly.
The HSE wishes to apologies unreservedly to patients and their families for any difficulties that this will cause. We wish to reassure patients and their families that local HSE Management are working hard to resolve this issue as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile Cllr. Brogan has been told by the HSE that all vacancies in LUH, including those arising from retirements are subject to an approval process to fill the position. Line managers submit a business case and request to hire paperwork.
Hospitals have the authority to approve replacement posts. Each post is considered individually at hospital senior management level and a decision is made to fill the post or not to fill the post.
“There can be delays within the NRS process or failure to fill posts and the HR department at LUH then attempts to fill posts in a temporary capacity pending the NRS filling the post permanently,” added the official response.
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