The Government is to provide nearly €3 million in additional funding to hospitals in Dublin, Cork and Galway in a bid to tackle problems in their emergency departments.
The money, which was approved by the Department of Health’s new special delivery unit, is to come from funding originally allocated by the Government to the National Treatment Purchase Fund.
The largest individual sum - €730,000 - is to go to the Mater Hospital in Dublin.
Beaumont Hospital is to receive €407,000 in funding, St Vincent’s Hospital/St Columcille’s Hospital €448,000, Tallaght Hospital €306,675, Galway University Hospital €349,000,and Cork University Hospital €429,000.
The provision of the funding is conditional on the hospitals ensure that ward rounds by consultants are carried out seven days per week to allow for the discharge of patients and on progressing the implementation of the HSE’s overall acute medicine programme.
Hospitals will not be allowed to offset the additional capacity provided on foot of the additional special delivery unit funding by cutting back elsewhere.
At Cork University Hospital the provision of the additional money is on condition that up to Christmas and in January 2012 “no patient will wait more than 23 hours in the emergency department and that the trolley wait target will be maintained at a least 70 per cent below the maximum daily trolley count since January 2010”.
The funding provided by the special delivery unit will stay in place until the end of the year. However the Department of Health said this afternoon that the measures, which are aimed at easing pressure on the emergency unit, will continue next year as a result of funding allocated by the HSE.
The funding to be provided to the Mater is earmarked for the provision of assisted discharge packages, intermediate beds, increased bed capacity for low acuity purposes and to allow for the re-opening of 17 step-down beds at St Mary’s Hospital in the Phoenix Park.
