THERE ARE FEARS that the emergency department at Midlands Regional Hospital will be downgraded.
The Medical Independent says it has seen documentation which suggests that services will be reduced to deal with daytime minor injuries in an effort to deal with ongoing doctor shortages.
It’s understood that one of the options being considered after the 11 July NCHD changeover date is to empty the hospital’s emergency department by 10pm each night, with all ambulance patients being diverted to Tullamore, Naas or Kilkenny. It’s also been suggested that GPs working out of hours would have access to the emergency department beds.
A report presented at a hospital meeting last month revealed that after 11 July Midlands Regional will only have two surgical registrars and no medical registrars available to it. The emergency department requires four surgical and two medical registrars.
The Medical Independent reports that it’s been proposed to close the hospitals in Mullinagar and Portlaoise to acute surgical admissions.
Midlands 103 radio reports that Laois Offaly TD Charlie Flanagan has accused the HSE of not coming clean over the situation in the hospital in Portlaoise. He says he’s raised the matter on a number of occasions and has sought a report from the Health Minister on junior doctor shortages.
Junior doctors
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