Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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869. To ask the Minister for Health to provide an update on the recent decision regarding the moving of complex surgeries from the Midland Regional Hospital, Portlaoise, and the curtailing of emergency services at the facility; the reason this decision was made; why it was decided that patients currently in the facility do not need to be transferred; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22422/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The HSE has advised that complex surgery (bowel surgery) in Midland Regional Hospital Portlaoise will be transferred to St. James's Hospital or Tullamore as the volumes are too low to maintain the requisite expertise of clinical staff. This will result in the discontinuation of undifferentiated surgical cases that present at the hospital's Emergency Department.

This work is being done to strengthen services in Portlaoise Hospital from a patient safety and quality perspective and to ensure that services currently provided by the hospital that are not viable are discontinued and that services that are viable, are safe and adequately resourced. This is also in keeping with the recommendations of the HIQA Report into services at the hospital.

I wish to assure the Deputy that I am committed to securing and further developing the role of Portlaoise Hospital as a constituent hospital within the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group. Any change to its services will be undertaken in a planned and orderly manner and will take account of existing patient flows, demands in other hospitals and the need to develop particular services at Portlaoise in the context of overall service reorganisation in the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group. The HSE has made it clear that maternity, acute medical and paediatric services will continue, and that elective day surgery is likely to be expanded. Patient safety and outcome must come first and following concerns raised by HIQA over the potentially unsafe low volume of complex operations carried out at the hospital, the Hospital Group has decided to move complex surgery to bigger centres.

I am confident that these changes will improve services for patients at Portlaoise Hospital.