THE CHANGES planned for Roscommon County Hospital may not come into effect for a number of months, it was confirmed yesterday.
Minister for Health James Reilly said an urgent care centre open from 8am to 8pm would replace the hospital’s 24-hour emergency department once there were sufficient numbers of junior doctors and GPs “on board”. It is expected GPs will be on site at night and weekends, with access to diagnostics, to see patients attending out of hours.
Meanwhile, Dr Donal O’Shea, chairman of the medical board of St Columcille’s Hospital, Loughlinstown, Dublin, said there are plans to end 24-hour emergency services at his hospital probably in October or November. Emergencies will present instead at Dublin’s St Vincent’s hospital, he said.
There would need to be capital investment in both hospitals to facilitate the changes, he added, before stating the country probably only needed five functioning hospital emergency departments.
Separately, Fine Gael TD for Laois-Offaly Charlie Flanagan said he expected around-the-clock emergency services to continue at the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise from July 11th as the hospital had now recruited enough junior doctors to staff the service. “There will be no reason to make any changes,” he said.
However, Dr Philip Crowley, HSE national director of quality and patient safety, said there would be changes at hospitals of a similar size to that in Ennis. A list of these hospitals provided by the HSE to the Health Information and Quality Authority earlier this year included Navan, Portlaoise, Loughlinstown, Roscommon, Mallow and Bantry hospitals.
“We would hope to see hospitals like Ennis adopting a profile of patients, looking after a profile of patients, similar to Ennis in the next number of months,” he said.
Around-the-clock emergency services were removed from Ennis hospital in 2009.
Dr Una Geary, consultant in emergency medicine with the HSE, said the changes were not about saving money but about patient safety. In the future, she added, major trauma and major medical emergencies like acute strokes and heart attacks will have to go to larger centres. She said any patient with chest pain worried about where to go should dial 999 and an ambulance would know where to take them.
Earlier Dr Reilly said an urgent care centre was not the same as a minor injuries unit as it was doctor rather than nurse led. He said he understood the frustration and distrust among people in Roscommon but reiterated what is currently available at the hospital is not safe. It was also “utterly irresponsible” to suggest the mere appointment of a full-time emergency medicine consultant would make the hospital safe, he said.
“This Government and certainly my department will formulate policy based on evidence-based information, not hearsay, not emotion, not what people clamour for. I am not going to be the minister for popularity. I am going to be the minister for safe healthcare,” he added.
Asked which other smaller hospitals were unsafe, Dr Reilly said the names were in the Hiqa report on Mallow hospital. “They are there for all to read . . . ,” he said.
“We are examining the other hospitals at the moment, the likes of Loughlinstown, the likes of Portlaoise and other hospitals. But I mean they’re all different. Portlaoise is very, very different to Loughlinstown and very different to Roscommon,” he added.
A series of protests has been planned by the Roscommon Hospital Action Group with a protest march to the Dáil next Wednesday and protests at bridges over the river Shannon on Friday.