Seven-day urgent care centre will focus on minor injuries
The Mercy Urgent Care Centre will be based at the former St Mary’s Orthopaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher and will treat patients over the age of 10.
The centre, which will open seven days a week from 8am to 6pm, will be equipped with X-ray machines and staff will be able to apply plaster casts.
It will treat people who self-refer, or are referred by GPs and Southdoc. The centre will be manned by a consultant in emergency medicine, doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, radiographers, and other healthcare professionals.
In many cases, patients will be treated quicker than at the emergency departments and the normal €100 emergency department charge will apply to non-medical card holders.
No charge will be made to patients referred on from GPs or Southdoc.
Between 40% and 50% of patients who present to emergency departments have minor injuries and the opening of this centre will help to alleviate waiting times and backlogs at CUH and MUH (Mercy University Hospital).
Dr Gerry McCarthy, an emergency medicine consultant who is responsible for the centre, said it is “vital to reorganise emergency services in order to provide the most appropriate care to the people of Cork”.
He said the facility should ensure that people attending with injuries that were unlikely to require hospital admission would be seen speedily and discharged.
Desmond Murphy, chairman of the MUH board of governors, described it as an inspiring new venture for the hospital.
“We are very happy to be in a position to govern this facility. The new centre will be of enormous benefit to the people of Cork City and surrounding areas and this venture reaffirms MUH’s commitment to healthcare provision in Cork.”
HSE South’s regional director of operations, Pat Healy, said the centre was the result of ongoing collaboration between the HSE and MUH as part of the re-organisation of services in acute hospitals in Cork.
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