AN ongoing row between Cork University Hospital (CUH) and HSE South West over funding and staffing levels will have serious consequences for West Cork patients if it’s not resolved.

The stark warning came from Beara-based Cllr Finbarr Harrington (Ind), a member of the HSE’s Regional Health Forum South West who was last year elected its first chairperson.

He warned that CUH management and staff need to be given whatever is needed to make sure that they are prepared heading into a long winter.

The dispute arose after the hospital’s CEO Jennifer Kearney claimed staffing numbers were too low to safely manage patient numbers heading into the winter, which was soon supported by the hospital’s senior clinical directors and consultants.

She warned that the hospital was ‘unsafe’ for patients due to a shortfall of more than 1,000 staff.

‘A lot of people from West Cork end up in CUH,’ said Cllr Harrington, ‘so I would be concerned if the staff and the management are telling us this. We’re now at the start of September and we’re heading into the winter, this needs to be resolved.’

Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill denied any increased patient safety issues, stating that the hospital instead must manage its funds more efficiently.

One West Cork GP disagreed, stating: ‘Our experience of CUH in recent years has been [that it is] very hardworking, very lean, and very efficient when it needs to be. There’s no fat to trim there.’

The local GP said the emergency department at CUH is the main referral centre for West Cork and while ‘there is a limited acute service in Bantry Hospital which is lifesaving and very highly valued, it can’t do everything’.

Cllr Harrington urged a resolution so that inpatients ‘are not waiting forever and a day’.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.