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2010 Press Releases

Health Service Reconfiguration Roadmap for Cork and Kerry
29.11.2010

On November 22nd 2010, the Health Service Executive (HSE) published its “Reconfiguration of Acute Hospital Services, Cork and Kerry – A roadmap to develop an integrated university hospital network”.

The Roadmap is the work of Prof John Higgins, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and is the result of nearly two years of consultation and planning. What Professor Higgins and his team have done is bring the HSE, the Mercy University Hospital, the South Infirmary and Victoria University Hospital and University College Cork to agree on fundamental change in the way we organise our hospital services in Cork and Kerry and how we manage the interface between acute hospitals and primary and community services.

Some highlights of the roadmap are:

  • Pre-hospital care will be reorganised, introducing teams of advanced paramedics in North Cork, West Cork and Kerry and introducing Intermediate Care Vehicles (ICVs) to free up ambulances from patient transport duties.
  • Cork and Kerry will lead a national pilot programme to introduce electronic GP referral.
  • Operating theatre schedules will be fundamentally overhauled with the help of UCC’s 4C unit.
  • Consultants will work in regional specialty teams organised within 5 regional clinical directorates – Diagnostics, Medicine, Mental Health, Perioperative Care and Women and Children’s Health.
  • Emergency patients will be streamed between serious trauma, medical emergencies and minor injuries.
  • Each hospital will concentrate on a particular range of services according to its size and location and there will be a common ICT platform and patient management system accessible also to General Practitioners.

Perhaps the most far reaching development of all is that within the next six months, representatives of SIVUH, MUH, UCC and HSE will sit down to work out the basis of a formal relationship between the hospitals and the university to build an integrated university hospital network within a national framework being established by the HSE to examine the whole issue of academic healthcare centres.

A pdf copy of the full roadmap, a short summary document, and a chart showing what will take place where may be downloaded from the HSE website at:  http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/newscentre/Reconfiguration%20Roadmap%20is%20published.html

 

 



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