Main points of the Hanly report:
- The hours of non consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) must be cut
in line with new EU legislation but this has to be done, not by
employing more NCHDs, but by more than doubling the number of
hospital consultants to 3,600 by January 2013.
- Consultants should be rostered to work around the clock, seven
days a week.
- The working day of hospitals should be extended to cover periods
such as 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Outpatient clinics should open late into
the evening as should operating theatres.
- Radical reorganisation of acute hospital services will be required
across the State.
- All hospitals providing emergency or A&E care must have seven
doctors in each of medicine, surgery and anaesthesia on site to
provide basic medical cover within a 48-hour working week.
- Hospitals without sufficient volumes of patients and activity
cannot sustain large numbers of consultants.
- Hospital services should be reorganised in two pilot regions as a
first step. The pilot regions selected are the Mid Western and East
Coast Area Health Board regions. In these areas hospital services
should be organised into regional networks, with consultants
serving the network rather than individual hospitals.
- In these regions, each with a population of 350,000, there should
be one major hospital providing a full range of services including
A&E and maternity services.
- All other hospitals in these regions, such as Nenagh and Ennis
General Hospital, should then be reclassified as local hospitals.
They should provide minor injury units, more elective day care
procedures and respite and convalescent services.
- This blueprint should ultimately "inform" the reorganisation of
hospital services in other regions.