OUTPATIENTS getting treatment from University Hospital Limerickย (UHL) will soon have the option of weekend and late evening appointments.
Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said she wants out-of-hours public appointments to become a reality in the near future.
Speaking to the media after a visit to University Hospital Limerick, she said: “I want to see outpatient clinics and appointments at weekends and out of hours in a way that goes way above and beyond what is currently happening.”
But before that agenda can be approached, the Minister and the HSE are facing a possible industrial action by health workers at the end of the month.
Minister Carrol MacNeill would not be drawn on whether she believes the Mid West needs a second emergency department (ED).
The Minister was speaking following a visit to UHL, in which she met with staff, toured the new 96-bed blocks currently underway, and visited the ED.
Minister Carroll McNeill said she is happy to see that “different actions give different results”, pointing to the huge reduction in the numbers of people on trolleys following the first bank holiday weekend on which consultants were rostered on site in hospitals.
“Making sure that people are rostered all weekend makes an enormous difference to patient experience and safety and to the staff experience over the bank holiday weekend,” the Minister said.
“After the previous bank holiday weekend, there were 617 people on trolleys (nationally). After the St Patrick’s weekend, there were 230. That’s a 63 per cent drop. That is the new baseline.”
She said she wanted to “thank every single person”ย in UHL who worked over the weekend to achieve that result.
Asked whether a second ED is on the horizon for the Mid West, having received an interim report for health watch-dog HIQA, the Minister said that it is “really important that HIQA be allowed to complete their report”, which is due to be submitted in May.
More than 1,100 submissions were made by the public to the HIQA review of emergency services in the Mid West, an interim briefingย published on Wednesday shows.
HIQA was commissioned under the previous government to carry out a review of urgent and emergency healthcare services across Limerick, Clare, and north Tipperary.
The Minister confirmed that she intends to meet the family of late Shannon teenager Aoife Johnston next week.
16-year-old Aoife Johnston died at UHL inย 2022, two days after presenting at the emergency department with symptoms of suspected sepsis.
The Leaving Cert student died from meningitis in the hospital’s ICU in December 19, 2022.
It was 12 hours before Ms Johnston was seen and assessed by a doctor who prescribed antibiotics, which could have saved her life, and 14 hours before those drugs were administered and she was transferred to ICU.
The Minister described what happened to the young girls as “unforgivable, unconscionable, and completely avoidable”.
HSE CEO Bernard Gloster, who joined the Minister for the hospital tours, said it is “only in the last few years that you can see the type of investment that you might expect to see … in the acute services in this region over the last four years alone, staffing has grown by well over a thousand”.
