Programme not about closing rural hospitals, insists reconfiguration chief

THE Health Service Executive’s reconfiguration programme is all about patient safety and is not a process for closing down rural hospitals, the man charged with the task has insisted.

HSE national director of reconfiguration, Brian Gilroy, said the process was about improving quality of care, access to care and patient throughput.

He said there was no agreement on how major acute work should be carried out and what should be examined now was how and where the rest of patient care should be delivered.