No Cork and Kerry hospitals will close

by Catherine Shanahan

Friday, March 06, 2009

NO hospitals will close as part of a Health Service Executive plan to reconfigure hospital services in Cork and Kerry, according to the consultant tasked with implementing the project.

Professor John Higgins, appointed project director last week by HSE chief executive Brendan Drumm, yesterday put paid to rumours Bantry and Mallow hospitals would close.

The consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, who oversaw the amalgamation of maternity services in Cork in 2007, said: "It is not our plan to close hospitals. Our plan is to enhance the range of services that we provide to all of the population. We are hoping to put a whole range of additional services into Bantry and Mallow, bringing services closer to people’s homes."

Prof Higgins said additional patient services were already being provided in Mitchelstown, Bantry and Mallow in the form of outpatient clinics for expectant mothers, as well as a gynaecology theatre in Bantry.

In relation to the effect the reconfiguration may have on existing A&E services in Cork and Kerry, Prof Higgins said he did not think any decisions had been made.

"I don’t think anything has been confirmed. A review of A&E services in Cork and Kerry is under way in the context of the Teamwork (Acute Hospitals Review HSE South) report. The same principals will apply. What should be carried out centrally will be carried out centrally, but there is a whole range of patients who could be treated differently," he said.

Prof Higgins said that no additional money would be forthcoming from the HSE to implement the reconfiguration project. "There will be some costs but I think you can take it that in the next few years, it would be fooling people if we said there was a lot of money about to do it.

"But that doesn’t stop us making changes, re-organising, putting better services in place. If you are innovative and imaginative you can bring about change," he said.

Prof Higgins added that the Teamwork report was "not the only relevant report" in the context of reconfiguring services and that they would also be informed by the National Cancer Strategy and the report on the reconfiguration of maternity services in Dublin.

Prof Higgins said heintends consulting with stakeholders for the next10 to 12 weeks before placing the report in the public domain.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Friday, March 06, 2009