Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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151. To ask the Minister for Health if there are plans in place to reduce opening times and services provided at the emergency department in Our Lady's, Hospital Navan [33249/16]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Our Lady’s Hospital Navan is part of the Ireland East Hospital Group. Hospital Groups must increasingly focus on networks of service provision with smaller hospitals managing routine, urgent or planned care locally, more complex care managed in the larger hospitals and better linkages with primary, continuing and social care.

A number of developments at the hospital have been funded in recent years including the refurbishment of the Emergency Department and upgrade of general theatres and Central Sterile Services. There has also been an increase in day surgical activity, with surgeons from the Mater Misercordiae University Hospital carrying out day surgery in Navan. Further developments in relation to surgery and other clinical services are being considered by the Group. There is significant potential for enhancing the hospital’s role as a constituent hospital within the Hospital Group. As a smaller hospital, the challenge is to make sure that Navan provides more of the right type of services, which can safely be delivered, so that we maximise the benefit to patients.

Any proposed change to services provided at Navan Hospital, will need to take account of existing patient flows, demands in other hospitals and the need to develop particular services in the context of overall service reorganisation in the Hospital Group.