THE HEALTH Service Executive (HSE) is planning to curtail round the clock AE services at Ennis and Nenagh General Hospitals from the second quarter of this year, it has been confirmed.
Plans have been drawn up to limit the units' hours from about 8am to 8pm. Outside those times ambulances will take emergency patients to the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.
In addition, the HSE plans to centralise all acute surgery for the midwest region, including inpatient elective surgery, at the Mid Western Regional Hospital from July 1st next.
The plans were confirmed yesterday by Paul Burke, a consultant vascular surgeon at the Limerick hospital and chairman of the project board charged with implementing the changes by the HSE.
Confirmation of the changes came as the HSE finally published a report drawn up by Teamwork Management Services and Horwath Consulting Limited into the reconfiguration of acute hospital services in the midwest region.
The report published by the HSE yesterday is dated April 2008. Details of a report by the same team of consultants on how hospital services in the midwest should be reorganised, labelled "final report" and dated December 2007, were published by The Irish Timeslast week.
The recommendations of both reports are similar - centralising AE, surgery and critical care services in Limerick - but the language of the earlier report has been toned down in yesterday's edition. References in the first version to current arrangements being "inherently unsafe" have been taken out and replaced with the fact that current services "generate an increased clinical risk to patient safety".
The December 2007 report referred to €370 million in capital investment being required in the region's hospitals. This reference has been deleted from the April 2008 version. Instead there are references to a reallocation of existing resources being required.
The HSE decided to publish its report yesterday after the Labour Party announced it would put it into the public domain at a press conference in Limerick today.
Mr Burke said the extra workload on the AE unit in Limerick would be relatively small because there are only on average 7.5 attendances per night at AE in Nenagh and 9.2 in Ennis, most of which are self referred and could be dealt with by GPs. In addition, he said there are on average just four 999 calls between Ennis and Nenagh per night and these will be diverted to the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.
The outside consultants report recommended AEs in Ennis, Nenagh and St John's Hospital in Limerick become nurse-led minor injury units. The HSE says now they will be "doctor-led local emergency centres". Mr Burke said advanced paramedics had been deployed in Ennis and Nenagh to deal with emergencies and two new AE consultants will be appointed to Limerick.