Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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1403. To ask the Minister for Health if he will sanction the development of an elective-only hospital for the mid-west region; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1128/23]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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On 7 December 2022, the Government approved the next stage of the Enhanced Provision of Elective Care Programme and progression of the development of new Elective Hospitals in Cork and Galway (with Dublin to follow in due course). The new Elective Hospitals will provide significant additional capacity, enabling the separation of scheduled and unscheduled care. This will change the way in which day cases, scheduled procedures, surgeries, scans and outpatient services can be better arranged across the country, ensuring greater capacity in the future and helping to address waiting times.

The locations chosen to implement the Elective Care Programme will enhance capacity and tackle waiting times on a national basis and enable the Elective Hospitals to cover as wide an area and patient population as possible, extending beyond existing and future health areas, including the mid-west.

The locations were also chosen in line with good practice which suggests that, in order to maximise economies of scale, dedicated, standalone elective centres should be ‘as big as is reasonably possible’ to meet identified patient demand while providing appropriate population coverage. The specific sites selected will allow for new facilities of a size and scale to maximise their  capacity to fully implement this national programme.

The introduction of this new delivery capability into the Public Healthcare System will benefit the whole population, including those who do not fall within the immediate ‘traditional’ geographical catchment areas. It is envisaged that the new Cork and Galway facilities combined will cater for up to 350,000 patients/procedures annually.

Complementary to the development of the new Elective Hospitals, the HSE will work with Hospital Groups and forthcoming Regional Health Areas to progress proposals for a shorter-term measure to address waiting lists by developing ‘Surgical Hubs’ in Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Dublin with a narrower scope of procedures. These will be modelled on the successful Reeves Centre at Tallaght University Hospital (which has significantly reduced waiting times for certain day-care procedures) and will have a shorter-term impact on waiting times. This intervention will also support efforts to consider the necessary reforms and enablers needed to separate unscheduled and scheduled care pathways that will be required by the longer-term provision of the Elective Care programme.