Cardiologist: teamwork could save €21m a year

GETTING doctors, nurses and other health professionals working as a team in managing chronic medical conditions in hospital day wards could achieve huge savings for the health services, a cardiologist claimed yesterday.

Heart specialist at St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin Dr Ken McDonald said thenational application of the hospital’s teamwork approach to heart failure therapy could prevent 6,000 hospital admissions, free up almost 67,000 bed days and achieve savings of more than €21 million every year.

Intravenous diuretic therapy, developed at St Vincent’s, is being used on heart failure patients who would otherwise end up in accident and emergency departments and need a hospital stay.