New review of surgery at Navan

The Health Service Executive (HSE) has commissioned experts from the UK to carry out another review of surgery at Our Lady's Hospital in Navan.

In a statement yesterday the HSE said the new review would inform decisions on how safe surgical services could be delivered.

It said the new review of surgical services was part of a comprehensive process which involved many separate aspects.

At the end of March the HSE announced restrictions on the types of surgery that could be carried out at Our Lady's Hospital.

This followed a separate review of a number of cases conducted by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).

The HSE said the RCSI had recommended the transfer from Navan of certain categories of surgical patients "whose treatment can better be provided at a major tertiary centre in order to optimise patient outcomes".

The RCSI was asked to review a number of cases following the receipt by the HSE North East Area of a risk-management report on general surgical services last November.

That report recommended an urgent review of the types of surgery carried out to assess which procedures were being undertaken too infrequently to maintain competence.

"We have concluded that the combination of limited numbers of major bowel and upper GI (gastro-intestinal) surgery cases and occasional complex trauma cases with running a one-in-two consultant rota and restricted opportunities for benchmarking of outcomes must raise questions about the appropriateness and safety of continuing with the current case mix," the report said.