Ms Maria Bridgeman:

Certainly, we are quite innovative in our approach in the mid-west as well. From the community perspective, we work very closely in collaboration with our colleagues in the hospital. We have a bed capacity across the community services of 492 beds, which Dr. O’Connor referenced earlier, 342 of which are for long-stay or nursing home support scheme, NHSS, capacity. We have a total rehab complement of 88 beds, of which 25 of those have come on stream over the past year or year and a half. In addition to that, we have 75 transitional short-stay contracted beds with private providers across the system. We have quite a number of beds available for that transitional care.

In addition to what Professor Cowan said, I am now currently the chair of the mid-west interagency group. Therefore, I chair the group with the Garda and county councils of the three counties and my colleague, Professor Cowan, is on that group with us. We have quite a lot of different initiatives ongoing with the county council, for example, healthy communities and age friendly initiatives. Our health and well-being department, particularly, works very closely with them. We sit on their local community development committees, LCDCs, and we are also involved in developing LCPs with them. There is quite a lot of active work going on there.

We are also currently working with the Garda in respect of developing a new project, for which we have put in a bid to the Estimates. It will have HSE clinicians working closely with the Garda in dealing with vulnerable people who are in crisis at that particular time. That is a project we hope will get funded and come on stream. Again, that will certainly help patients go to the right care and place and avoid either ending up in a jail cell or in the emergency department.

We hope that this will be funded. In addition to helping people avoid coming to the hospital., we have seen a significant increase in funding and in access to diagnostics. As Professor Cowan noted in her opening statement, GPs now have direct access to a number of diagnostics and since this has been introduced, there have been over 10,000 referrals. In addition, last week we commenced a mobile diagnostic service in the mid-west. As an example, up to yesterday, 12 people have used this mobile diagnostic system and as a result, ten people avoided hospital because they had their results and therefore did not have to go. There is a huge amount of innovative work and a lot of initiatives happening across the community services that will have an impact on emergency departments and on hospital avoidance but most importantly, will help benefit the people of the mid-west and the patients by providing care, as per Sláintecare, nearer to home where they want it and getting the right care in the right place. The financial impact of what we have been given in the community will really be very beneficial going forward.