Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We just spoke about how the health recruitment freeze is affecting the seven-day cardiac service, but it is also stopping other initiatives in the national hospital space. A large hospital in the country was able to transfer 220 patients who receive bimonthly infusion therapy into a community primary care setting because it had specialist nurses to help it do that. The patients remain under the active care of the hospital management teams but the topline results are demonstrated by this initiative. It reduced the hospital drugs bill by €850,000, freed up 1,760 appointment spaces in the schedule, saved 3,520 nursing hours and treatment bed-share options, allowing those to be offered to other patients, and it saved the pharmacy significant compounding time. This could be done at a national level, and could possibly affect up to 2,500 patients, but it is a fact that the embargo is stopping the recruitment of nurses to assist that process, which I make the Taoiseach aware of.

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