Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 17 January 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Challenges Facing Emergency Departments in Public Hospitals: HSE

Mr. Damien McCallion:

I will address that. We look at it in three strands. The first is the admission avoidance piece with, as Mr. Mulvany said, GP access, which was rolled out as part of the winter plan, increased GP out-of-hours, which saw numbers decrease - we went from 22,000 GP out-of-hours calls to 40,000 and then 35,000 in those two weeks post Christmas - and increased support for the ambulance service, which, again, is around admission avoidance.

Those are the initial avoidance measures that were in place. The higher impact of those were around the GP piece and some of the investment in what are called front door services.

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