This article is from page 10 of the 2012-06-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
ENNIS General Hospital has under gone significant changes in the services it offers patients in the last three years. While the County Clare hospital has lost its 24-hour accident and emergency service along with its acute services, the number of day surgeries and non-acute procedures it is undertaking has grown significantly.
In 2008 there were no cardiac day procedures carried out at the hospital. In 2011 however there were 72 such procedures undertaken by specialised staff.
Similarly in 2008 there were no gastroenterology, geriatrics, maxillo-facial surgery or plastic surgery day procedures carried out at the hospital.
Three years later, 228 plastic surgeries, 143 gastroenterology procedures, 119 maxillo-facial surgeries, and three geriatric procedures were completed in one year on the hospital campus.
The most significant increase was in vascular surgery, where the number of procedures in a year increased by 400 per cent from 28 in 2008 to 140 in 2011.
There was also a significant increase in work carried out in the urology department from 69 procedures in 2008 to 342 procedures in 2011 – a jump of 395.65 per cent.
Gynaecology procedures increased by 43.75 per cent in that time period, while dentistry increased by 27.79 per cent.
With the change in the hospital’s status within the Mid Western Hospitals Group medical procedures and surgical procedures had dropped by 35.64 per cent and 12.59 per cent respectively.
CEO of the Mid Western Hospitals Group, Ann Doherty has previously explained, “We are engaged in build- ing a single hospital system. If that sounds radical let me assure you that the Trust will not be an exercise in centralisation of services at the expense of the smaller hospitals. It is significant that changes in medicine and technology are leading to the establishment of region-wide specialist departments in fields such as radiology and cardiology. This had led to dramatic improvements such as in Ennis where tele-radiology was introduced in April 2011 as the main method of reporting X-rays and the development of outreach cardiology services such as the heart watch programme.”
A new 50-bed unit at Ennis General Hospital is scheduled to open at the end of the month, which will provide new facilities to go with the procedure including two new wards with 50 new beds and en-suites, and facilities for CT scanning, operating theatres, endoscope facilities and day surgery.