Reilly vows Mayo General will not lose services

Reilly vows Mayo General will not lose services


Minister’s visit secures hospital’s future

Ciara Galvin

IN an exclusive interview with The Mayo News, Minister for Health James Reilly last week confirmed that the future of Mayo General Hospital (MGH) is ‘absolutely secure’. The minister made the comments after meeting with HSE management in Castlebar about the recently announced hospital group for the West/North West. Speaking outside the Sacred Heart Hospital, Minister Reilly said the meeting with HSE management and staff went very well.
“We are reforming [and] reshaping our health service, and I want those working at the coal face and in it, to be part of that, because they are the ones who know where the problems are, and very often have the solutions,” said the Minister.
Last month, Minister Reilly announced the re-organisation of Irish hospitals into six largely autonomous groups aimed at providing improved outcomes for patients. Along with MGH, the West/North West hospital group contains University Hospital Galway and Merlin Park University Hospital; Sligo Regional Hospital; Letterkenny General Hospital; Roscommon County Hospital; and Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe.
Asked whether the new grouping would mean that that MGH would lose services to other facilities in the group, the Minister stated: “There is no concern about the future for Mayo General Hospital. It’s absolutely secure.
“I know that some people are trying to suggest that this is going to have a negative impact, but quite the contrary; it’s going to have a very positive impact and it’s going to secure [the hospital’s] future. I did a radio interview and it was suggested to me that there was a big problem with [bed shortages and patients on] trolleys here in Mayo. But I was talking to the Clinical Director today (Thursday), and as of today, there was nobody on trolleys,” explained the Minister. He added that the Acute Medical Assessment Unit was having a ‘very positive impact’ on the trolley count at Mayo General Hospital.
Minister Reilly detailed that hospitals within the groups would be a size that will allow them to ‘compete nationally and internationally’ for the best of staff and for the attraction of partners in research and innovation.
When specifically asked whether some services at MGH would be moved to the Centre of Excellence in Galway as part of the reshaping, the Minister stated, “Not at all. We want the patient treated at the lowest level of complexity that’s safe, timely, efficient and as near to home as possible.
“When money follows the patient it therefore follows the hospitals that can provide the service more cost-effectively, and they will be the ones that will thrive. If you are in a group and you have a hospital like Mayo that can provide many of the services much cheaper than a bigger hospital like Galway, the services will be provided here in Mayo. So I see more work coming to Mayo.
“I also know that the Cystic Fibrosis Unit is going to out tender in the next number of weeks … That will be another development here,” he stated, adding that more services will start to become available, ‘freeing up the Regional Hospital in Galway to do the super specialist work that only they can do’. There will be more services and patients from Galway ‘heading back to Mayo, and not the other way around’, he said.
Minister Reilly verified that a new dialysis unit would be complete by the end of the month and that this would mean that patients from Mayo who had to travel to Galway previously would not have to travel there for treatment anymore.
“I don’t want people travelling to these Model 4 hospitals when they could be going to their local hospital; that’s absolutely contrary to our policy. It’s like bringing your ten-year-old Volkswagen to a Ferrari testing centre – sure, they’ll do a great job, but your local garage will do just as well, a lot more conveniently and more cost effectively,” quipped the Minister.

Sacred Heart ‘ready to rock on’
After taking a tour of the Sacred Heart Hospital, which has received €11 million in funding, the minster described the facility as a ‘fine institution’ with ‘wonderful history and an ethos of care and compassion’.
“It’s here for a hundred years or more and its future for the next hundred years is going to be secured,” stated Minister Reilly.
When asked if the securing of €11 million for the hospital was down to political pressure, the Minister said it was always going to be down to whatever facility was ready to receive the funding: “Oh no, it was always going to be a case of whoever was ready to come up the list in terms of having funding made available, and they are ready to rock on here.
”I’m delighted for the people of Castlebar and Mayo generally that we’ll able to have a really modern facility here continuing the excellent care and compassion that’s always been here, and that wonderful ethos that’s been here for so long,” he concluded.