Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has sought the board of the HSE to intervene to speed up plans to extend the opening hours of injury units around the country. The Minister told the chairman of the HSE board, Ciarán Devane, that at present the “pace is too slow”.
Mr Donnelly directed that the plan to extend the opening hours of injury units be put in place within the next couple of months.
There are more than a dozen injury units in operation across the country that can deal with issues such as broken bones, sprains, minor facial injuries, minor scalds and burns as well as wounds, bites and cuts. Essentially they are facilities that deal with injuries that are not life threatening and unlikely to need admission to hospital. The injury units act as an alternative to standard emergency departments in hospitals which have faced considerable overcrowding problems in many cases in recent years.
However, Mr Donnelly expressed frustration at the planned time frame for extending their opening hours. In a letter to Mr Devane, the Minister said proposals for extending the opening hours of existing injury units were first put forward in the Urgent and Emergency Care Plan which was agreed by the Government in July last year. “The aim was to ensure that all injury units were operating from 8am to 8pm. The issue has been raised at a number of ministerial/urgent and emergency care meetings. The pace is too slow.
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“Since May 2023, the HSE has standardised the operating hours of just one additional injury unit. My officials recently received a plan from the HSE outlining a timeline for standardising the opening hours of the remaining (five) injury units. Under this recent proposal the HSE suggested this would be done in quarter 4, 2024 (with the exception of Cashel).”
“It is difficult to understand a delay of this magnitude. The initiative requires a total of about 15 additional nursing staff – 13 staff nurses and two advanced nurse practitioners, according to figures provided by the HSE. I would like the (HSE) board to intervene directly and ensure this is expedited and delivered by the end of quarter 3 at the latest.”
Speaking in April, HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster said he was willing to listen to proposals to open minor injury clinics in Nenagh, Ennis and St John’s in Limerick on a 24-hour basis to ease the pressure on University Hospital Limerick which has faced serious overcrowding problems for years. “If the evidence is there, and if the staffing capability is there to extend the local injury units, there’s no question but that any proposal from the hospital to me would be considered,” he said.
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