Ms Colette Cowan:

Urgent care centres was a concept raised at the GP forum with the chief clinical director for UHL. We engaged with our colleague, Mr. Bernard Gloster, the chief officer, and his team to discuss how we could support patients that just need access to diagnostics. These patients would come into an urgent care centre model on the campus rather than going into the busy emergency department. They would be seen there in a unit run by GPs. This model is used in the UK. The GPs could then refer into the emergency department if the patient required anything other than the diagnostics.

A team of people went to the UK, including an emergency medical consultant, and they are now working on a proposal for what this scheme might look like. This will be something that we could test in the Irish system which would take away some of the pressure of patients who may be waiting for long periods for care requiring only a quick turnaround. We can share that paper with the committee once it has been written up. The team is in the middle of working on it at the moment.