THE OPENING hours of the A&E at Louth County Hospital in Dundalk are to be halved this year once a new emergency department is opened at Lourdes hospital in Drogheda.
All acute care is also likely to be transferred from the Dundalk hospital to Drogheda early next year.
The timescales were outlined in a letter sent by the hospital network manager for the northeast, Stephen Mulvany, to Teamwork management consultants last month.
The letter, dated February 4th and seen by The Irish Times, states: “It is realistic to assume that we can transfer all acute care from Dundalk to Drogheda by say Q1/Q2 2010”.
It adds that upon the opening of the new emergency department in Drogheda between June and August this year, “we will covert emergency department at Dundalk to 12 hour” and ensure ambulances with trauma patients bypass Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan.
Patients in these ambulances would also be taken to Drogheda.
Thomas Sharkey, a Sinn Féin councillor for Louth, said ambulances were already bypassing Dundalk hospital and if the hours of its emergency department were also reduced it was going to undermine other services at the hospital including intensive care. It was a step in the “winding down of Louth County Hospital”, he said.
The HSE in a statement said it was reshaping services so the public would have access to better quality services. “Services will be reconfigured from the current situation where acute services are provided in five separate sites in the region to two acute hospitals ,” it said.
“In Louth/Meath the detailed planning to reconfigure services is ongoing. In advance of any reconfiguration of services we have to examine and ensure that the necessary capacity and capability is available to take the additional services on safely and to put it in place if it is not already there.”
Mr Mulvany’s letter also referred to a review of anaesthetic services at hospitals in Louth/Meath. The review was commissioned by the HSE on foot of recommendations in the Lourdes Hospital inquiry report and the report into the death of Tania McCabe.
In the correspondence Mr Mulvany asks Teamwork for “a soft copy” of its draft review “so that I can insert comments in same”.
Mr Sharkey said it was worrying that what were being put out as independent reports by the HSE were being altered before they were finalised by HSE officials.
Mr Mulvany also admitted recently he caused revisions to be made to the report into the death of Mrs McCabe but the authors later stressed they stood over its independence. Mr Mulvany insisted that as commissioner of these reports it was standard practice for him to engage with review groups before reports were finalised.