Weekend services to expand at Mayo University Hospital
Area health manager for the HSE Mary Warde has confirmed that Mayo University Hospital has moved away from a five-day service.
A sustained focus on weekend activity has been ongoing in Mayo University Hospital in recent months in a bid to support patient flow. Responding to a query from Cllr Michael Loftus around weekend services at the hospital, area health manager Mary Warde confirmed that the hospital has moved away from a five-day service. She told the March meeting of HSE West Northwest that MUH has had a sustained focus on weekend activity, to help support patient flow over recent months.
“Medical consultants are doing extra rostered ward rounds on Saturdays. Radiology consultants are also working on Saturdays, alongside this, we have a number of the multidisciplinary team covering Saturdays including cardiac investigations, physio and occupational therapy for older people services,” said Ms Warde.
“We are engaging with the relevant unions in order to expand weekend activity further and we have four projects with the unions currently. Three of those projects are in diagnostics and the others concern the provision of therapies at weekends, supporting older patients to have a better opportunity for admission avoidance and a reduced length of stay. We expect to have an outcome on these decisions in the next number of weeks.”
She said it is not expected that the process of engagement will be a protracted one, adding: “We expect to implement the Saturday working in a few weeks and there are some already doing so under our public-only consultant contracts. So we have moved away from a five-day service.”
Welcoming the news, Cllr Loftus said: “I would love to see a seven-day service in all hospitals and am delighted to see all the work done by the HSE to date. It is the way to go and to reduce the numbers, especially in Castlebar.”
