A new day surgery hospital to be built in Dublin will take significant pressure off hospital waiting lists by treating up to 10,000 patients a year, it was claimed yesterday. Eithne Donnellan reports.
The €10 million hospital, on which building work is to begin next month, is expected to admit its first patients early next year.
The Merrion Day Surgery Centre at Merrion Road, is a private venture but hopes to treat public and private patients. Public patients, it hopes, will be referred by the National Treatment Purchase Fund.
One of the promoters of the venture Dr David Harris, a consultant oral surgeon at Dublin's Blackrock Clinic, said the major benefit of having a day surgery hospital was that patients due for admission would not have their appointments cancelled because of overcrowding in A&E or because urgent cases were admitted, which happens in acute hospitals with day surgery units.
The hospital is planning to admit patients needing non urgent surgery across a range of specialities including general surgery, gynaecology, ear nose and throat, ophthalmology, and orthopaedics.