The hospital reconfiguration in the Mid-West “clearly hasn’t worked.”
That’s according to the Health Minister who is visiting Nenagh and Thurles today to launch two healthcare facilities for the county.
Stephen Donnelly wouldn’t be drawn on whether the whole reconfiguration had failed, stating that UHL hadn’t been given all of the resources it needed at the time, but came short in deeming it a failure.
He told Tipp Today that focusing on having options in Nenagh and Ennis:
“It clearly hasn’t worked, so what is the solution?
The solution is making sure that UHL has the resources it needs. That before people go near UHL they have other options. So, that’s the injury units in Ennis, in Nenagh, in John’s.”
“We have to make sure that the emergency departments have what they need.”
Minister Stephen Donnelly also reacted to a story from a Tipperary caller who witnessed older patients soiling themselves and was told that she would have to be examined on the floor due to lack of space in UHL:
“that is completely unacceptable, its not a level of healthcare that anyone should say is an acceptable level of healthcare. Not acceptable for any patient. ”
” It’s also not acceptable for our healthcare workers, there’s no doctor or nurse or healthcare assistant of physiotherapist who wants to be treating a patient in that way.”
This comes just days after the damning report from HIQA on the situation and conditions in UHL.
He recounted a recent trip to the facility but when asked by the station if he witnessed the ‘chaos’ that’s been reported in the emergency department he refused to describe it in that way, stating that it was also a challenging position for the staff also, who he says are tired of apologising to patients.
He says the whole system needs to be addressed and didn’t feel that reopening A and E in Nenagh was the answer:
“Nenagh has less than 60 beds and it has a limited number of specialties. And modern healthcare we know is very specialist, so if any of us, if any of your listeners have something wrong with them or several things wrong with them and they need to brought in… they need access and the doctors treating them need access to alot of different specialties.”
Minister Donnelly will now make his way to Thurles to the Primary Care Centre due to open in the coming weeks.
