Zero Star Health Service

by Mike

The scrutiny will only get worse this week as the Leader of this country once again steps into the spotlight and gives a performance that he hopes will bore everyone to tears in a such a way as they will want to forget about anything remotely to do with a tribunal.

Meanwhile, away from Planet Bertie, the same old problems that existed before are still around. With that in mind it was interesting to read yesterday that the Rotunda Hospital is renting hotel rooms for pregnant women, because of a lack of hospital beds.

Is it just me or does that not show how wasteful the government has been over the last 10 years in that they use more taxpayers money to put basically paper a crack? I don’t know how it can be seen as a good situation to an ever increasing problem in our health service. Something which we all take for granted until we really need it and then we learn of how bad things are.

The Rotunda released a statement stating that there had been a 14% increase in birth rates in the hospital this year alone, with 830 births in August, compared with an average of 550 for the same period last year. The HSE feels this is the short term option that will hopefully deal with this mini crisis.

I would’ve thought, and hey it’s just my opinion, that pregnant women would need some sort of stability as they rapidly approach a period that starts off as stressful and ends up in a joyous occasion. However even putting those that are considered as low risk in a non medically cleansed hotel room while those in the health service scratch their heads, and say “Gee, I wonder why we never saw this coming”, seems crazy to me.

Could I offer you a solution? Not right now, which is as much as the health service can offer as well. There are those that wish us to coast through life and not question anything and they offer us a “do as I say, don’t do as I do” mentality for our troubles. So while spin doctors, spokespersons and other members of the cabinet struggle to come up with a positive spin on recent proceedings in our ‘beloved’ Taoiseach’s life, we turn the page to find something else that his party have let us down on.

What I would suggest is that maybe a few politicians, PR men, spin doctors and the like take a look at a hospital anywhere (Dublin would be the obvious choice) late on a weekend night, without the hoopla of bodyguards and state sponsored cars, and get an inside view as to how badly it is screwed up.

Will it happen? I highly doubt it. The Celtic Tiger has made a lot of people wealthy and has done some good things for this country. However it has also masked a lot of problems and as a result many things are put on “the long finger”.

I think I know which finger some people in a hospital waiting room right now would like to give those in charge, don’t you?

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 and is filed under Pain and suffering, Thoughts & Questions, Views on News.