ONE OF Cork’s main hospitals said yesterday it would not participate in any discussions to implement a plan commissioned by the HSE that would see the centralisation of all acute hospital services in the city and county at Cork University Hospital.
Mercy University Hospital chief executive Pat Madden said the board of the 152-year-old hospital had voted to reject a report commissioned by the HSE South on the reconfiguration of hospital services in Cork and Kerry.
The report by Horwath Consulting Ireland and Teamwork Management Services recommends the transfer of all acute services from the Mercy and the South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital in Cork city and from Bantry and Mallow general hospitals to CUH.
The report says that such a move, to be carried out over a five-year period, is designed to establish a regional centre of excellence at CUH which would provide the critical mass necessary for the delivery of quality outcomes.
In the sixth year of the programme acute services at Kerry General Hospital in Tralee would be relocated.
Mr Madden said there was no evidence that the concentration of acute care in one centre would benefit the patients of Cork and Munster and he noted that the report differs substantially from previous reviews of acute care in Cork.
The HSE said that it is currently reviewing the report, which will be published on June 9th. “No hospital will close but all hospitals will fundamentally change how and what services they deliver and no service will be removed without a safe replacement service being put in place,” said the HSE.