Hospital facilities: Around 100 additional inpatient hospital beds are to be provided in new units to be opened around the State in the coming year, it has emerged.
New hospital facilities are to be commissioned in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Wexford, Cavan, Drogheda and the midlands from €60 million in special funding provided by the Department of Health.
In addition to the inpatient beds, nearly 70 day beds are also to be provided in the facilities to be brought on stream.
Details of the new units to be commissioned are set out in the Health Service Executive (HSE) service plan for the year which was approved by the Tánaiste and Minister for Health, Mary Harney, several weeks ago.
The document has not been published but was lodged in the Oireachtas last week.
The largest single development to be commissioned will be a new hospital at Tullamore which will provide 32 new inpatient beds and 21 day beds.
Nearly 30 additional beds will be provided at University College Hospital Galway as part of investment in cardiothoracic, orthopaedic and radiotherapy services.
Facilities in the burns unit and the intensive care unit will also be enhanced.
The long-awaited 19 additional inpatient beds at Wexford General Hospital will also be provided this year, according to the service. This development has been the subject of a long-running campaign in the southeast for many years.
Cavan General Hospital will receive new theatres and 21 inpatient beds, the service plan reveals.
Around 35 day beds will be established at Cork University Hospital which will also see the long-planned amalgamation of the city's maternity services.
St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin will receive four additional intensive care beds and 12 additional day care beds.
Accident and emergency services are to be expanded at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portloaise and at the Mercy University Hospital in Cork.
Accident and emergency facilities at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda are to be enhanced, according to the service plan.
The service plan also maintains that two modular theatres are to be provided at Louth County Hospital in Dundalk.
It also reveals that a new MRI unit is to be established at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin.
The Irish Times reported earlier this month that the Department of Health had provided €60 million to the HSE in the financial estimates for the year to allow for the commissioning of new units. The department said at the time that it would discuss the specifics of units to open with the HSE at a later stage.
In its service plan for the year, the HSE said that its key issues for the year included the impact on scheduled elective or non-urgent work in hospitals as a result of emergency admissions.
Other key issues identified by the HSE included the demand on national centres in meeting the needs of their catchment population for general acute services, attendance levels at accident and emergency units and "the over- dependence on the acute sector due to the under development of primary, continuing and community care services".
