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

Review of acute hospital services in HSE Mid-West
An action plan for acute and community services
• The patients to be much better informed and reassured that the service they are
accessing has an effective system for measuring quality, that performance is objectively
measured, that it is confirmed to be satisfactory and that any shortcomings are quickly
identified and action is taken accordingly; and
• The organisation to know that clinical risk management is being effectively and
proactively managed and that there is optimal use of resources;
Therefore, there is a need for consultants, at the same time as citing clinical autonomy as
acting in the best interests of their patients, also to contribute to performance review,
checking that the overall quality of their clinical and organisational working practices are in
line with international best practice.
SUMMARY
The current system for acute hospital services disperses the resources across
four hospital sites to deliver 4 stand-alone services, each serving the local
population. This dilution generates substantially increased risks for patients
and staff alike. There are not enough consultants to provide continuous high
quality 24/7 acute care and not enough workload on these sites to justify more
consultants.
It is only by reconfiguring the present system, to bring all the existing
resources onto one site, that the services, once the consultants have been
brought together, can be successfully delivered to an assured quality of care in
line with international best practice standards.
There needs to be a system of internal peer review and clinical governance to
measure service quality and patient outcomes.
In the next section, we look at the development of safe, sustainable high quality acute and
community services in the Mid-West.
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