Controversy over private Galway hospital lab work set to cost €1.3 million

It recently emerged that around 25% of the caseload at the UHG laboratory came from the Bon Secours Hospital under a longstanding service-level agreement at a time when there was a backlog of nearly 3,500 patient samples.

The backlog resulted in delays with suspected cancer cases and biopsies, and forced the public hospital to outsource patient samples to commercial labs at substantial expense to the taxpayer.

Hospital management subsequently confirmed that the agreement with the Bon Secours was being brought to an end to prioritise public hospital capacity and comply with Sláintecare regulations.

However, the HSE has now revealed that the loss of the private work from the Bon Secours will result in the loss of around €1.3 million, warning that this will impact on its budget for the year.

The additional financial blow comes amid reports that the budget overspend by the HSE West and North West up to the end of July was just short of €50 million, having doubled since the end of March.

The financial loss was confirmed by Health Service Executive Integrated Health Area Manager for Galway Roscommon, Ann Cosgrove, in response to a question raised at the Regional Health Forum by Councillor Shane Forde.

Cllr Forde had asked the health authority to outline the loss of revenue from the hospital’s laboratories resulting from the loss of outside work and to clarify whether it would affect budgetary conditions.

“The income loss for GUH will be approximately €1.3m per annum and this will impact the budgetary outturn for the year,” said Ms Cosgrove in her written reply.

The arrangement with the Bon Secours also triggered controversy over compliance with the Public-Only Consultant Contract rolled out under Sláintecare.

Staff whistleblowers disclosed that consultants employed on public-only contracts were being asked by hospital management to analyse private specimens, prompting resistance and breaching national directives prohibiting private work by contract holders within public facilities.

The controversy led to sharp exchanges in Dáil Éireann and before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health, where senior health officials were questioned on why public-only consultants were handling private work.

HSE Chief Operations Officer Anne O’Connor told the committee that a directive had been issued by the regional executive officer to cease the arrangement once the matter emerged.

She reported that the Bon Secours had been put on notice to build its own laboratory testing capacity in the wake of the controversy.