Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I am responding to the Deputies on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Mary Harney.

The Government is committed to ensuring the delivery of best possible quality health services in an effective and efficient way. Patient safety is of paramount importance in ensuring people have confidence in the services and that the best possible patient outcomes are achieved. It is essential that patient safety and quality are prioritised and that services are organised and managed accordingly.

The six hospitals in the mid-western region providing acute services have a complement of 828 in-patient beds and 124 day beds. Between them, the hospitals have a total operating annual budget of €275 million, with a staffing complement of 3,248. The activity profile for the service consists of 47,000 in-patients, 34,000 day cases, 180,000 out-patient attendances and 110,000 accident and emergency presentations per annum. The maternity hospital deals with 5,500 births per annum. These figures underline the importance of the work done by the hospitals in the mid-west area and the contribution they make to the health services of the region.

Mallow General Hospital provides a valuable range of in-patient, out-patient and day case services. It is, and will continue to be, an important health care facility. In the past years, there has been a considerable level of investment in equipment and infrastructure at the hospital. A capital sum of €1.5 million was provided for the provision of CT scanning services at Mallow General Hospital on a five-day week basis. The support staff has been put in place and the CT scanner has been operational since September of this year. A refurbishment programme has also commenced at the hospital. Work on the upgrading of the emergency department has been completed and work on the extension of the regional laboratory system is about to commence. A sum of €260,000 was allocated in the current year for ward and other minor equipment, upgrading of toilets and compliance with hygiene and decontamination standards.

The HSE has commissioned a number of strategic reviews of the configuration of acute hospital services including in the mid-west and the south. In each case, the first priority is patient safety. The challenge in the years ahead will be to organise, manage and deliver high quality services that are focused in the first instance on the safety of patients. Horwath Consultants in association with Teamwork Management Services were commissioned by the HSE to work on the strategic reviews in the mid-west and southern regions. The reviews focus on identifying the best configuration of acute hospital services in the regions, including arrangements for accident and emergency, critical care, acute medicine and surgery, together with diagnostic services so that the highest quality of care can be delivered to the population of the regions concerned.

The HSE reviews will act as inputs to decisions on how best to reconfigure acute services in the regions concerned. The Government and the Executive are committed to ensuring that the approach to reorganisation of services is carried out in consultation with the key stakeholders and that each element is progressed incrementally.

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