Mr. Seán Egan:

The key element is that it operates under one governance model. To describe the value of that, it can happen - it should not - that you end up with competition for resources between hospitals. If they are governed and managed under the same management structure, then everyone needs to work together to provide services. There is also a benefit in regard to sharing of resources. If you look at surgical care, for example, you need an emergency care roster with surgeons to run an emergency department but they are not going to be busy all the time waiting for emergency care to come in the door. You also need additional work that can be done and a big challenge with that is having theatre capacity.

The key critical element of any kind of emergency care model is to have enough anaesthetic cover as well. If you have a model of service delivery that enables the apportioning of work on appropriate sites while maintaining the same pool of staff so you can maintain a roster, you make theses services sustainable. That is the value of that model with respect to differentiating the emergency treatment from the elective treatment.