Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Issues at the Emergency Department of University Hospital Limerick Raised in the HIQA Report: Discussion

Professor Colette Cowan:

I was answering the Deputy's first question as to what the broad plan is. That is what I was outlining. I will defer to Professor Lenehan to talk to the Deputy about the here and now. As for the elective hospital for the region, the Deputy will know, as do all my colleagues, that when the emergency department is busy the first thing we have to cancel is elective surgery, so then we are looking at waiting lists. There are patients other than the emergency department patients who are at home worried about their surgery, so we invade, for want of a better word, the surgical space with medical patients. We believe we have an opportunity here to allow patients to get their surgery on another site such that we do not have to cancel their appointments. I will defer to Professor Lenehan.

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