Monaghan Town Councillor Tommy Hagan has said that it is bad enough that day and daily the hospitals in the region are putting patients on trolleys because Monaghan General is downgraded, now he has learned that such patients with Health Insurance are amongst those suffering in this way yet the full insurance is being claimed by the HSE for their care.

Councillor Hagan said he recently spoke to the family of a man in his forties from Monaghan Town who took ill with stomach pains on 19 of June. He was brought by ambulance to Louth County Hospital in Dundalk and transferred the same day to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. “When he arrived there he was seen in A&E and then put on a trolley and brought to an office in the Ladies Gynae ward where he lay on a trolley over the weekend. On the following Monday this same patient who had private health insurance was brought to the Orthopaedic Ward and put into another office there, still on a trolley until Wednesday. Eventually the patients did get a bed on Wednesday and stayed in hospital until the following Sunday. However when leaving he was given the bill for his stay which was the same as if he had stayed in a private room with private health care for the full nine days duration yet he had only access to a bed for four of those days.

Cllr Hagan thought that it was “disgraceful” that somebody who is ill had to lie on a trolley at all but said to then have the gall to charge them for a full private service is absolutely disgraceful. “I told the man’s family to contact their health insurer and I am advising all others who either have or may find themselves in a similar situation to do so as well. The insurance companies should not pay the full amount as the service was inadequate and not what their clients had paid their insurance for.” He added, “For a long time now the people of this area have been forced to wait on trolleys in corridors like cattle at the mart. Maybe now the HSE will stand up and take notice if one or all of the Health Insurance companies challenge then and it hurts Harney in her budget. The decent people of Monaghan had a decent hospital where no such trickery was tolerated. Now there is an inadequate service that should be challenged by patients and insurance companies alike."