*Cllr Pat Daly (FF) with Taoiseach Micheál Martin (FF). Photograph: Joe Buckley
NO “false promises” will be made regarding the potential of a new hospital for Co Clare, An Taoiseach has said.
During a visit to Ennis on Sunday morning to celebrate the centenary of Fianna Fáil at the annual Eamon de Valera commemoration, Taoiseach Micheál Martin (FF) said clinical advice not politics would determine the future of healthcare provision in the Mid-West region.
Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG) in March announced plans to build a new hospital in Raheen to serve the Mid-West region with Co Clare once again overlooked.
Sunday marked the first visit of the Taoiseach to Co Clare since the successful Amgen Irish Open in Doonbeg a fortnight previously. In West Clare, he made the comment that the golf “put this place on the map”.
So far as healthcare is concerned, the people living in “this place” or Doonbeg are located 80km from the nearest emergency department, a trip of one hour and ten mintues provided there are no delays.
When questioned by The Clare Echo as to what he would say to the people living in parts of Co Clare that don’t feel they are “on the map” when it comes to health services and a dearth of Gardaí, the Taoiseach commented, “There’s no doubt that Doonbeg was put on the map globally in the context of The Irish Open, it was a very good day all round, a good number of days for Clare, for Doonbeg and for Ireland in terms of the international image and tourism is a very important industry for Clare and it would have been boosted by that.
“In terms of the health situation, I think the broader position for acute hospitals more generally, a lot of work has been done, a decision has been made, there is work underway in terms of the proper configuration of health services across the Mid-West including Clare, Limerick and Tipperary,” he added. “We will keep the situation under review on the type of services we will locate on hospital campuses, that work is underway”.
Many residents of Co Clare are living over an hour from their nearest emergency department, one which is consistently one of the most over-crowded in the country. “That is true in many counties,” the Taoiseach said of the distance people have to travel to access an emergency department in life or death situations. “When you say emergency care, the most important issue in emergency care is the first responder and the quality of your first response is critical. Proper modern emergency departments need a full multi-disciplinary team of professionals in place, we’ve had this debate for over thirty years in Ireland nationally, we have to be guided by clinical best practice and advice in terms of these decisions”.
Services will continue to be reviewed but false promises will not be issued, the Taoiseach told The Clare Echo. “As population increases and as it evolves we’re reviewing services on a continuing basis, I’m not going to make false promises or make commitments that in the modern era are going to be very difficult to fulfil in terms of putting together the critical mass that is required for acute hospitals. It is known in the past where we had sub-optimal provision in hospitals that claim to be acute that we had many bad outcomes, I think what is required is listening to the clinical advice. We have moved things on a lot compared to where we were ten or twenty years ago compared to the first responders and national emergency care council, that has made a fundamental shift in terms of emergency care. We will continue to work to try create the best provision of health care, as close as we possibly can to the people in the community and primary care which has increased exponentially over the last two decades”.
Of Clare’s population of 130,000 in the region of 32,000 are patients travelling to University Hospital Limerick and University Hospital Galway, figures which according to health campaigners justify the need for a model three hospital in Co Clare. “We will take clinical advice on that, where appropriate additional services can be located as close as possible to people, there is work underway and we will wait and take advice on what is optimal and best for the people for care and outcomes. Outcomes is the key in terms of medical treatment, we had a serious issue in UHL itself, decisions made in terms of a new hospital and there has to be wider consideration in terms of how services are configured in respect of the regional more general,” Martin stated.
On the extra distance that the people of Clare have to travel for emergency care, the Taoiseach commented, “When we define emergency care we need to be very clear as to what we mean, a sub-optimal base is not good for people either, I think the clinical advice has always been to resource, strengthen and have as modern an emergency care service as you possibly can, the challenge in trying to have that in multiple locations in a given region is very challenging, it has been proven in the past not to give us the best outcomes, it didn’t give us the best outcomes in the past in terms of patient outcomes and so on. In the modern era, our outcomes are better overall, it has been particularly challenging for the Mid-West I would acknowledge but a lot of reforms have been underway over the last three years by the HSE, we have to be very careful always that politics or non-medical considerations don’t trump the medical consideration or clinical advice, that is a challenge I faced when I was Minister for Health myself from 2000 to 2004, there was protests all over the country about cancer centres of excellence, people wanted to maintain sub-optimal services in local context which were not giving people the best outcomes. The recent report from the cancer registry shows the survival rate from cancer has dramatically increased over that thirty year period because of decisions we took, they were very unpopular at the time but they have proven to be effective, we have to be serious in understanding people’s proximity to services, we will always bring services as close to people as possible but we have to keep an eye on outcomes and interventions as to where they are located”.
