Government to unveil major reform of hospital system

A major reform of the country’s hospital system will be announced later today.

The report into hospital reconfiguration will see the emergence of six hospital groups with university links governing 49 hospitals.

The idea is that each hospital will have a “mothership” governance structure centred around a major academic teaching centre.

“The Government is launching the biggest reform of our hospital system since the foundation of the State,” said James Reilly, the health minister, after a meeting of EU health ministers in Dublin yesterday.

Two reports will be launched today — The Report on the Establishment of Hospital Groups and Securing the Future of Smaller Hospitals: a Framework for Development.

Dr Reilly said the country’s smaller hospitals would be doing more work, but work for which they were more suited, while the bigger hospitals would engage in more complex work.

He also referred to a meeting he had with the Northern Ireland health minister Edwin Poots at which they discussed the formation of an all-Ireland congenital paediatric heart surgery group.

Dr Reilly said complex surgery would be performed in Dublin while less complex work would be conducted in Belfast.

He said surgeons would travel around Ireland as a team, and that patients with very complex needs would travel to Britain.

Dr Reilly said there was no intention to “do away” with existing pathways of care delivered to patients as a result of the reconfiguration process.

He was responding to concern that the Rotunda Hospital could no longer refer patients with complex needs to the nearby Mater Hospital because it would be linked to Beaumont.

The new regime is likely to see a major shake-up in three regions — the North-East, Midlands, and South-East. It is expected that the new southern grouping will take in hospitals in Cork, Waterford, Tipperary, and Kerry.

It is understood that Waterford Regional Hospital (WRH) will escape major cuts in the reconfiguration.

While WRH will lose its regional status, it will be redesignated a university hospital and services such as emergency trauma, cardiovascular surgeries, orthopaedics and oncology services would continue at the hospital.

It is expected that the new groupings will include the alignment of WRH and South Tipperary General Hospital with Cork University Hospital.