ANOTHER PRIVATE hospital in Dublin will open an emergency department this morning offering paying patients fast access to a consultant for treatment of a variety of conditions.
The Blackrock Clinic emergency unit will be open weekdays from 9am to 6pm but may extend these hours to cover weekends in due course.
The initial consultation fee will be €120 but additional tests such as X-rays or scans will cost more. However, a spokeswoman for the hospital said these additional services would be covered by private health insurance if patients were insured.
The unit will treat minor injuries, chest pain and a range of other conditions, but it will not offer treatment to pregnant women or children under 14.
The clinical director of the new unit is Aidan Gleeson, who is also a consultant in emergency medicine at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital.
He said the new unit would provide patients living in the Dublin area with the option to avail of stress-free, easily accessible top-class emergency treatment. “Patients will be seen within a maximum of one hour and can be reassured that they will receive a speedy diagnosis and the best possible specialist care in a relaxed and calm environment,” he said.
At public hospitals like Beaumont where he also works, patients can wait much longer to be seen and can also wait hours on top of that for a bed if they need to be admitted.
Asked how he could do both jobs, Mr Gleeson said his contract entitled him to work in the private sector when he had fulfilled his duties in Beaumont. He said while Beaumont had a lot of problems with overcrowding in its emergency department, this was due to a shortage of inpatient beds. Even if there were 50 emergency medicine consultants there, it wouldn’t solve the problem, he said.
A number of other private hospitals including the Beacon, the Hermitage and Galway Clinic have opened emergency units in recent years. VHI Swiftcare clinics provide similar services.