Dr. Mary Favier of the Irish College of General Practitioners had the following to say on Drivetime (Thursday) regarding the 57,000 x-rays that went unreported in Tallaght Hospital.
57,000 x rays went unreported and orthopedics, where there are waiting times of 600 days, are particularly profitable areas and nobody has answered my question in relation to how many of those 57,000 x- rays were public and how many were private.
The HSE say they don’t know which I find impossible to believe and the hospital is refusing to answer the question. Anybody locally is saying that the vast majority if not all, of those x- rays are public.
A quote from the book, The Bitter Pill, written anonymously three years ago by a doctor working within the health system may provide the answer.
Imagine a radiologist’s office. On his desk sit two stacks of x-rays. One stack, usually the bigger one, is that of public patients; the other is that of private patients.
For each private x-ray the radiologist will be paid upwards of €50. For the public x-ray he has already been paid, in his monthly salary.
Whether the public x-ray is reported on today, tomorrow or next week, the radiologist will still be paid the full amount of his salary, on time.
For private scans, on the other hand, he will be paid only after he has completed them. The upshot is that the private scans often take precedence over the public ones (The Bitter Pill, page 29).
The real question that needs to be answered is – How debased, corrupt and immoral does the administration of this country have to become before the people rise up and throw these contemptible scumbags in jail?
Recent Comments