Medical group gets green light for €250m co-located hospital

PLANNING permission was granted yesterday for a co-located private hospital on the grounds of the Mid-West Regional Hospital in Limerick.

The Beacon Medical Group (BMG) will spend €250 million building the 183-bed, six-theatre facility on a site leased from the State, which, once fully operational, will employ 460 full-time staff.

BMG said it is confident of achieving funding for the hospital once final contracts are signed off by the Department of Health. It should take 30 months to build. The project will create about 620 construction jobs and BMG said that when combined with additional part-time opportunities and additional indirect employment, the hospital could create jobs for up to 690 people.

The hospital will accommodate up to 9,400 inpatients and 40,000 outpatients per annum.

Capacity in the co-located hospital will also be available to the public hospital for public patients if required.

“We are extremely pleased to have received notification of the decision to grant planning for this proposed hospital and believe that it will bring significant benefits to the local community,” BMG medical director Professor Mark Redmond said. The new hospital will mirror the case-mix of the public hospital – which means all specialities catered for in the public hospital will also be catered for in the co-located hospital – with the exception of national specialities.

The new hospital will allow for 24/7 admission from the public hospital, the public emergency department, primary care centres and through GP referrals. It will have the capacity to treat all private patients currently catered for in the public hospital, thereby freeing up public beds for additional public patients.

BMG is planning to build three co-located hospitals as part of the government’s co-located private hospitals project, announced in July 2005.

It has already secured planning permission from An Bord Pleanála for a €297m facility in Beaumont and it is awaiting a decision from the board on its €242m 185-bed private hospital at Cork University Hospital.