THE CHIEF executive of Dublin’s Adelaide and Meath Hospital, Incorporating the National Children’s Hospital Tallaght Hospital, has handed in his resignation.
Michael Lyons will leave the hospital in early December after a 10-year stint as its manager. The hospital, in a statement, said he was stepping down for health reasons.
He is to be replaced by Prof Kevin Conlon, who has been on the staff of the hospital for some time and is well known as one of the leading specialists in the treatment of pancreatic cancer in the State.
Prof Conlon was previously medical director of the hospital and prior to joining the staff was associate chairman of the department of surgery in Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York. He also holds an MBA from Columbia University.
Lyndon McCann, chairman of the hospital board, said he was confident Prof Conlon could step into this new role “based on his excellent track record and long experience in healthcare”.
Tallaght hospital has just lost breast cancer services and will also lose its children’s hospital when the three Dublin children’s hospitals are merged in a new national children’s hospital to be built at the Mater hospital site by 2014.
A spokeswoman for Tallaght hospital said Mr Lyons’s decision to step down had nothing to do with these changes. His decision was purely made on health grounds, she said.
Mr Lyons said it had been a pleasure and a privilege to lead the hospital. “I am proud of what we have accomplished over the last 10 years and I know the hospital’s success will continue well into the future,” he said.
Mr McCann said he respected Mr Lyons’s decision. “Since taking over as CEO in 1999, Michael and his management team have built up the services of the organisation. He has helped in transitioning AMNCH to respond to the healthcare needs of our catchment area and facilitated the provision of high-quality patient-centred care,” he said.
During Mr Lyons’s tenure there were many service developments but there was also criticism of the hospital for treating too many private patients.
The level of private patients being treated there was twice the official norm at 40 per cent, the HSE noted in 2006, as it urged the hospital to take immediate steps to address the situation.