Dublin to get second new elective hospital under revised plans

A second elective hospital specialising in common procedures is to be built in Dublin, under revised Department of Health plans to relieve overcrowding in the health service.

Plans for two elective hospitals in the capital will be brought by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to Government before the summer recess, according to department secretary general Robert Watt.

Last year, Government gave the go-ahead for three elective hospitals, specialising in high-volume, low-acuity procedures such as joint and cataract operations. Sites have been chosen for the Galway and Cork facilities but the Dublin project has been delayed after the State decided the privately owned site initially selected was too expensive.

[ New elective hospitals for Cork and Galway could cost up to €1.5bn, Cabinet hears ]

Now the department’s plans have “evolved” to include two new elective hospitals in Dublin, Mr Watt revealed in a departure from his opening script at the Oireachtas Health Committee on Wednesday.

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Responding to Social Democrats TD Róisín Shortall, he cited “transport constraints” and rising demand from patients as factors behind the change in approach.

Plans to create a new medical school in Dublin had been submitted to the department, Mr Watt also disclosed.

The proposal by the Technological University of Dublin (TUD) to set up a medical school was being looked at “very favourably” as a “positive development for training doctors”, he told TDs.

TUD had been approached by the Irish Humanitarian Medical School project to work on the establishment of a new medical programme to increase the number of medical graduates available to healthcare systems in the global south, the university later told The Irish Times.

“TU Dublin is supportive of the concept and enthusiastic about participation. The programme is only at the early concept stage and the support of relevant Government and medical bodies is being sought,” a spokeswoman said.

Mr Watt told the committee his department was looking at all opportunities to expand the number of training places for health courses, though this could not be done “overnight” as the necessary infrastructure had to be put in place.

“It has been the department’s clear view for some time that we’re not investing enough in training our own citizens and those of the EU across all disciplines. We’re doing everything we can to create new places.”

The department told The Irish Times its officials made clear to TUD at a recent meeting “that while we very much supported the training of medical students from the Global South, the School would also have to contribute significantly to meeting the chronic need for medical places for Irish & EU students”.

Demand for health services, driven by technology and demographic factors, was increasing by up to 3 per cent each year, Mr Watt pointed out, so “we need to train an awful lot more people” to work in health.

“There are plenty of people coming from exams who want to do medicine or nursing and they’re constrained by the number of places. On the other side, we have endless demands which we can’t meet for those same professions so there seems to be a policy mismatch, which we need to address.”

Fine Gael TD Colm Burke told the committee a patient in St Vincent’s University Hospital had spent 2½ years there even though the person was fit to be discharged and a suitable alternative care option had been identified. Another patient has spent 15 months in Cork University Hospital, according to Mr Burke, who criticised the high number of delayed discharges of patients from hospitals.

HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster agreed it was “shocking” that someone should remain in hospital for 2½ years, and said there was “no point in me defending that”. But he pointed out the average number of delayed discharges had dropped recently from about 600 a day to 500.

The promised provision of GP visit cards to 300,000 households below the median income had been further delayed, the committee heard. The measure was supposed to have been introduced last April, while the extension of free GP care to six and seven year olds was promised last December but still hasn’t happened.

Mr Watt said engagement with representative groups on both changes was continuing and the new deadline was the end of June.

While the Government could have gone ahead with the revision of income thresholds for GP visit cards, a political decision was taken not to proceed without consensus with doctors, Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane said.