Review of acute hospital services in the Mid - Health Service Executive

The ‘assumptions’ for pre-hospital services are that:
Review of acute hospital services in HSE Mid-West
An action plan for acute and community services
• The PCCC service has been resourced, developed, and working to recognised
international best practice standards for the management of the anticipated demand, both
during working hours and out-of-hours, for admissions avoidance and earlier supported
discharge for adults and children;
• The ambulance service has fully developed its mobile emergency response capabilities,
by developing and strategically deploying its Advanced Paramedic (AP) workforce and
optimising the air ambulance service across the region;
• There is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) and Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS)
workforce in place, leading the delivery of the network of Urgent Care Centres, integrated
with local APs and duty GP teams and the single regional A&E service; and
• There is effective partnership working across all elements of the pre-hospital and hospital
systems.
Precondition 3: The infrastructure for acute care must be in place
The future clinical model of acute care is designed around a robust infrastructure, as
illustrated in Figure 3 below, with four key enablers for the provision of an assured quality of
care:
• Clinical networks, led by formal clinical teams and teamworking, responsible for
managing and coordinating care for that specialty or category of care across the region,
including emergency care, planned care, cancer, critical care, obstetrics, paediatrics,
radiology, pathology, etc;
• Assured quality, through systematic clinical governance and peer review, supported by
dedicated, ‘state of the art’, undergraduate and post-graduate teaching and research
facilities for all specialties;
• Clinically relevant information technology and communications (unique patient
identification, electronic records, access to diagnostic test results, real time/store and
forward transfer of clinical images, teleconsultation, etc); and
• Telemedicine and associated technologies.
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