Work on the implementation of the controversial hospital reorganisation programme outlined in the Hanly report will begin early in the New Year despite local objections, the Department of Health said yesterday.
It said project teams would be put in place early next year in two health board areas where the recommendations of the Hanly report are to be piloted. These include the Mid-Western and East Coast Area Health Boards.
In both these regions the report recommends that full emergency services be scaled back at smaller hospitals. The hospitals affected will be Ennis General Hospital, Nenagh General Hospital and St Columcille's Hospital, Loughlinstown, Co, Dublin.
The A&Es at those hospitals are to be replaced with nurse-led minor injury units which will have limited opening hours. The plan has outraged GPs, hospital consultants, politicians and residents in the affected areas.
It has also caused widespread concern in other areas where smaller hospitals are located such as in Mallow, Roscommon and Ballinasloe. People in those areas fear the same fate is in store for their local A&E when the plan for the mid-west and east coast area health boards is rolled out across the State. However, the shape of the roll-out will not actually be known until the second phase of Hanly is published after the local elections next year.
Despite the concerns, the Department of Health said yesterday it hopes to name the members of the project teams who will spearhead the changes in the two pilot areas early in the New Year.
It is anxious to get the projects under way quickly because the changes are required, according to the Hanly report, if the State is to meet its legal obligations to reduce the working hours of junior hospital doctors to 58 hours a week by August 1st next year. At present these doctors are working an average of 75 hours a week.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said the Department was working with the health boards in both regions to get the right composition of people for the project teams. "We are trying to get a model that would be truly representative of the region in terms of the diverse interests in the region and that then could flesh out in considerable detail the principles of Hanly in so far as it applies to the respective regions of the mid- west and east coast," he said.
"So we are looking very carefully at the mix of people on this to make sure that we can get a group that genuinely articulates, accepts, and absorbs the views of local people and then can see how it can marry and reflect those into the model," he added.
Furthermore, Mr Martin said that despite the concerns in both regions about the implications of Hanly, both health boards had actually bid to the regions where Hanly would be piloted. "In other words the health boards saw it as a plus for them to get Hanly 1," he said.
He admitted he had hoped to have the project teams in place by Christmas. Now, the plan is to get them up and running in coming weeks.