The first patients will arrive at Roscommon’s Palliative Care Unit on Monday, just over a year after it was launched by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly. In Roscommon town, it will be under the governance and operational management of Roscommon University Hospital (RUH).
Patients in the new unit and their families will have access to specialist medical, nursing, health and social care professionals including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, social work, dietetics, speech and language therapy and pastoral care. The Roscommon Palliative Home Care Team, under the governance of HSE Community Healthcare West, will also be based at the new unit.
Built on a site purchased by Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation, the new eight-bed inpatient unit in Roscommon will have full day-care facilities and came in under budget at €6.3 million.
The two hospices in Roscommon and Mayo have been developed and paid for by a combined €15.5 million raised through support from people in the two counties. The Mayo Hospice in Castlebar was opened in 2019 at a cost of €9 million.
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The Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation was set up in 1993 to provide palliative care services to people with life limiting illnesses, and their families, in both counties. In the past 30 years its palliative care teams have assisted more than 20,000 patients and their families.
Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation chair Mike Smith said he was “thrilled” the new unit in Roscommon is open and commented “what better way to start the year.” Palliative care services were “so badly needed in Roscommon,” he said.
Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation chief executive Martina Jennings said the new Roscommon unit would not have been possible “without the generosity of so many communities across both counties”.
Everyone involved was “determined to ensure that patients with life limiting illnesses from Mayo and Roscommon have the best possible facilities, where they can be cared for with dignity and respect. I’m very proud of what this community has achieved,” she said.
Mary Garvey, manager at RUH, thanked “all of the staff in the hospital who have worked so hard over the past few months in preparing for the opening of the unit” as well as “our colleagues in HSE Support Services and HSE Capital Estates”.
She was “especially grateful” to the Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation team “for their ongoing financial support in providing palliative services in both this unit and in the Home Care Team.”
Donations to Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation can be made through hospice.ie, by phoning 094 93 88666, or by calling to the Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation office at Main St, Knock, Co Mayo.
