Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In terms of looking after patients, both general medical and Covid-related, we need to look at the best configurations for their care. I would like to speak briefly about University Hospital Waterford, which is a model 4 hospital in the south east. It provides medical services and acute care services to a population of 520,000 to 615,000, depending on which report one reads. It certainly is in excess of 500,000. The hospital is the regional cardiac care centre and the regional cancer centre for the south east. It provides all general surgical specialties. It is the regional orthopaedic centre and, in fact, the busiest trauma centre in the country. It provides cancer surgeries and breast, colorectal, head and neck, urology and dermatology services. It also supports the south-east palliative care service.

University Hospital Waterford's critical care bed number is totally inadequate to the needs of the region. There are only six ICU beds in the hospital and between three and four high-dependency beds at any one time for the entire population of the south east. The hospital needs investment in critical care beds, at least 12 ICU beds and 12 high-dependency beds that can be stepped up or down. The Dunmore wing was a great addition to the hospital and we were very lucky it was there to provide additional isolation rooms. However, those rooms are nearly all currently in use.

University Hospital Waterford is the most underfunded of the eight model 4 hospitals in the country, yet it is one of the busiest in output terms. For instance, University Hospital Limerick has a smaller patient catchment than University Hospital Waterford but has 700 more care staff. The latter has the lowest staff to bed ratio of all the model 4 hospitals. When will the Government recognise the budget deficits at the hospital and when will it receive a funding allocation on par with the other model 4 hospitals? When will the Government recognise the obstruction to enhancing services at the hospital which has been going on for years, exemplified by the delay in building the new mortuary that was approved in 2014? The remodelling of the CAT laboratory, which was supposed to take 12 weeks this year, took almost seven months to complete. A new CAT laboratory development was announced in September 2018 but has not yet advanced to the awarding of a tender, which will supposedly happen in December this year.

There has been a failure to implement a 24-7 cardiac care pathway for the south-east region, with University Hospital Waterford as one of five regional cardiac care centres. On the past two weekends, patients have been transferred by road ambulance, risking the nurses and doctors who may have to travel, the patients themselves and paramedic staff. That is unacceptable. We have to see about restoring the modular diagnostic laboratory activity that was taking place in the hospital, providing 30 patient angiograms a week. That service was suspended in February this year and has not been reinstated. It could possibly be done through a service level agreement with the local private hospital. Otherwise, the laboratory that was taken off site should be brought back.

The current Covid pathway for cardiac care means University Hospital Waterford cannot give a service to the other south-east hospitals. There is only one isolation bed available to the cardiac service, which means only one patient from an outlying hospital can be accommodated in the morning and one in the afternoon. The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, may be aware that there were seven patients awaiting transfer to the CAT laboratory in University Hospital Waterford this morning. Those patients are stuck in hospital beds in the meantime. The hospital has only one seat on the South/South West Hospital Group advisory board, even though it was promised three at the outset of this agreement. I have raised this a number of times but it has not yet been dealt with. When will University Hospital Waterford have funding on par with the other seven model 4 hospitals in the country and when will the Government approve funding to implement a 24-7 cardiac care service there?

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