PRIVATE healthcare provider 3fivetwo will extend its services across a full ward and two theatres in Enniskillen’s South West Acute Hospital (SWAH) this month.
The move was revealed by Deputy Chief Executive of the Western Trust Joe Lusby during January’s meeting of the Fermanagh and Omagh Health and Social Care Services Group.
In 2013, the Trust announced that it would work with the private healthcare provider to reduce waiting lists in SWAH. In 2015, 3fivetwo began treating patients who had been waiting long periods for surgical interventions in Gynaecology, General Surgery, Spinal Orthopaedics, Vascular and ENT. At the meeting on January 19, Mr. Lusby said: “3fivetwo are currently utilising 10 beds in Ward 4 and Theatre 5 at SWAH with services to be extended to the entire use of Ward 4 and Theatres 5 and 2 in February.”
Speaking to The Impartial Reporter this week, a NIPSA trade union official criticised the practice as “a knee-jerk reaction” and described it as “a short-term solution to a long-term problem.”
He said: “These developments are relatively new and we are putting our feelers out to see how our members are reacting to the news. 3fivetwo was a much smaller arrangement up until now. Clearly we are not at all happy that the Trust is putting a private sector provider in an NHS facility. I don’t know what the financial reason is for leasing out these wards – surely the cost is extortionate.”
He continued: “The South West Acute Hospital is an extremely expensive building which is funded through a Private Finance Initiative so I thought the Trust would have wanted to make full use of it.”
Waiting lists “are a cyclical problem that [the Trust] don’t want to address with a proper solution,” he claimed. “Most of these waiting lists are for orthopaedics and [the Trust] seems to think that the best solution is to wait until waiting lists are at crisis point, fund the private provider to reduce waiting lists, pull the funding, and the waiting lists will increase again. We need a permanent solution.”
A Unison official also opposed the move and said: “This private service for patients has a public cost. The fact is, it costs more to treat a patient privately.”
Unison is concerned that the 3fivetwo group will entice staff away from the bank rota, offering a better rate of pay, which “could have a serious implications on the already pressurised workload on wards.”

The minutes of the January 19 meeting of the Fermanagh and Omagh Health and Social Care Services Group state that Mr. Lusby said that additional sessions to target the waiting list for Urology would be held every weekend to the end of March 2016. He went on to say that the independent service provider 3fivetwo had been contracted to carry out clinical and surgical sessions to target spinal and orthopaedic cases.

In response to a member’s query regarding how the move will impact on staffing at the hospital, Mr. Lusby advised that “it was the responsibility of an independent provider to deliver the service including the appointment of staff.”

A spokeswoman from the Western Trust said: “The Western Trust and 3fivetwo Healthcare Group have agreed that the Group could utilise vacant bed and theatre accommodation in South West Acute Hospital, Enniskillen. This is being used to treat patients, as part of the Health and Social Care Board’s waiting lists initiative, who have been waiting long periods for surgical interventions in a number of specialties including Gynaecology, General Surgery, Spinal Orthopaedics, Vascular and ENT. This has been in place since mid-November 2015 and will continue until the end of March 2016 at which point it will be reviewed".