*Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG) in the Seanad.
POTENTIAL for building a second emergency department in the Mid-West will be reviewed next year, the Minister for Health has said.
Speaking in the Seanad on Thursday, Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG) said she was “not correctly quoted” by Oireachtas members of the Mid-West at a briefing over the future of emergency health services in the region, held on Wednesday evening.
Minister Carroll MacNeill in a memo to be delivered to Cabinet in the next fortnight is to recommend the expansion of University Hospital Limerick (UHL) and the extension of UHL campus with a second nearby hospital under a shared model.
It will be 2026 before the construction of a new model three hospital with a second emergency department for the region will be on considered, she revealed. “Our first priority has to be patient safety”.
An additional investment is envisaged for both Ennis and Nenagh but at the moment an emergency department in either county is unlikely. At present there are 81 beds in Ennis, the Minister outlined that an additional 48 is planned. In Nenagh there are presently 62 with this expected to rise by 27. St John’s currently have 95 with an additional 42 earmarked.
The Clare Echo understands that the Minister is 100 percent committed to Option A of the HIQA review which is UHL’s expansion and is confident of progressing Option B which is UHL’s further extension and an addition of another hospital nearby. The Minister is keen to take more time to examine data before deciding on whether a second ED is needed for the Mid-West.
“My priority is to deliver more beds as quickly as possible and to put in all the supporting architecture to make sure we can bring people out of Limerick, we are genuinely committed to it, we will prioritise Option A and B before Christmas and all look together at the opportunities for Option C in the New Year. I didn’t say those things at the meeting yesterday, I was not correctly quoted, we will look at Option C intelligently and in a paced way in the New Year. What HIQA have asked us to do for the people of the Mid-West is to put real teeth to Option A and B to that,” the Minister outlined.
Also in the Seanad, Minister Carroll MacNeill stressed that UHL is not the most under-pressure emergency department in the country. She said UHL has the seventh longest waiting times in the country. “It is not their processes, it is an acute bed capacity issue. In relation to the trolley numbers, it is absolutely clear that Limerick is consistently better whether you count in on the INMO or HSE figures, they are two very different things, INMO figures count the people in the emergency room generally, the HSE figures count the people on trolleys, they are slightly different ways of counting but in Limerick consistently more than the trolleys we have more people self referring to the hospital than any other region so those numbers will always be much higher, you have to look at the trend and it is persistently lower.
“I have to end this idea that Limerick is the worst hospital in terms of emergency departments, this is persistent throughout November Galway, St Vincent’s at the edge of my own constituency in Dublin and Cork are persistently worse in their trolley figures than Limerick and they don’t have the same issues that Limerick has. On Wednesday, there was 28 people on trolleys on the HSE figures at 8am, there was 42 in Galway, on Tuesday there was 27 in Limerick and there was 50 in Galway, 35 in St Vincent’s, it is persistently worse in other hospitals so we have to get away from the idea that Limerick is the place that is the most dangerous and under pressure, it isn’t actually as a consequence of two things, the greatly improved processes and the new bed block, we need more beds but the other hospitals have more to do and they don’t have the same presentation pressures, demographic pressures or bed capacity pressures, it is important to put that in context,” she added.
Clare Senator Martin Conway in his contribution opted against pleading the case for a new emergency department in his native county. He said UHL has been the issue he has discussed most in the Seanad and the Oireachtas Health Committee since 2011. “It has been utterly frustrating for years and years to week in week out, month in month out to hear the stories of people who have had negative experiences at the emergency department in UHL through no fault of the staff but because the accommodation and bed capacity wasn’t there, suddenly then there was a back-up in the emergency department and a citizen from my own county lost their life unnecessarily”.
Senator Conway praised the “urgency” shown by the Health Minister. He was hopeful the accelerated critical infrastructure plan would include health. “Hopefully you will be able to refer to a process for examining Option C but the critical thing at this moment in time is Option A and Option B because they eventually will lead to Option C, I know the commitment is there from you for all three options. I am very interested to hear how we will develop both Option A and Option B, I do believe more can be achieved on the site in Dooradoyle itself, they talk about a 96 bed block, my understanding is the history of the number 96 is because the pocket of funding for the block had to be kept at €200m, perhaps that can be scaled up and the next 96 bed block can potentially have another floor or two and add another 15 or 20 beds, that is the outside the box thinking that I know you are very open to because the whole idea of capping it at €200m when we all know bed capacity is needed and funding is available for it, it is just the process because you can’t magic beds over night, there has to be a process but what we can do is accelerate the implementation of Option B, I know you are fully committed and I know on behalf of the people of Mid-West, I thank you for your sense of urgency and commitment to this”.
