Mater take-off: adult patients at Dublin hospital to check in like airport passengers

THE FIRST phase of the new €284 million Mater adult hospital in Dublin unveiled yesterday will involve visitors to outpatients checking in like passengers at the airport.

The hospital’s main entrance, on the North Circular Road, and its outpatients department were on display yesterday and will be open to the public in six weeks as part of the first phase of the development.

A new emergency department, underground car park, operating theatres, intensive care unit, radiology and 120 single ensuite rooms will be rolled out in the second phase, between July and December this year. And final works will be completed in May 2013.

The glass-fronted entrance, with its escalator, glass lifts and wide-open spaces, had more in common with a modern airport than with the 151-year-old hospital from which it has grown.

The escalator leads up to the first-floor level, the “hospital street” where patients can avail of the self-service outpatients check-in. This will allow patients signal their presence using a barcode system and then relax in the coffee bar while monitoring a TV screen to see if they are called.

Coin-operated wheelchairs, much like those used in supermarkets, will also be available for patients with reduced mobility.

Brian Conlan, chief executive of the Mater hospital, said if the self-check-in facility works for outpatients it will be extended to the emergency department.

“The airline industry has paved the way for a lot of this,” he said.

The light-filled outpatients department will accommodate the running of 13 clinics at any one time. And the hospital has been designed so that if the new children’s hospital goes ahead there, the floors will be connectable and each speciality will match.

A floor above outpatients, one of the 120 spacious single rooms, was on display complete with ensuite bathroom and pull-out couch for relatives. The self-contained rooms will also feature a person-to-person nurse-call system so that patients can make contact with individual nurses on duty instead of buzzing the nurses’ station. The rooms will “automatically cut the risk of transmission of infection”, assistant director of nursing Celine O’Carroll explained. It will also be ideal for cystic fibrosis patients.

On the same level, a meeting room with ceiling-to-floor window looks northward over the city and down onto a roof garden which will be available to patients. The building has also incorporated artworks as well as a series of courtyards that lend it a sense of calm and space.