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Dublin: 7 °C Tuesday 21 May, 2013

Emergency Department at Cork hospital to close next week

The emergency department at Cork’s South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital will close next weekend.

Image: Alex E Proimos via Flickr/Creative Commons

THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT at Cork’s South Infirmary Victoria Hospital (SIVUH) is to close from Sunday 29 July, the Health Service Executive has confirmed.

The acute medicine and surgery services that have been provided at the facility will be moved to Cork University Hospital (CUH) and Mercy University Hospital (MUH).

The HSE says that additional beds to provide for acutely ill patients who would have previously been treated at SIVUH have already opened at CUH and MUH.

The re-organisation of services at SIVUH began at the end of last year with the transfer of elective orthopaedic and cardiology services, as well as the closure of SIVUH’s Emergency Department at night.

The HSE says the new Mercy Urgent Care Centre, located on the grounds of the former St Mary’s Orthopaedic Hospital in Gurranabraher Cork city, is an additional facility for those needing treatment for minor injuries; the care centre is led by a consultant in emergency medicine and has facilities to take x-rays, apply plaster casts and stitch wounds.

In a statement, the HSE said the realignment of emergency departments in Cork has enabled the transition of SIVUH to a mainly elective hospital with a particular expertise in day surgery and surgery that requires a short length of stay.

Read: ‘People are dying’ – pleas for a basic emergency service in Roscommon after death of teen>

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Comments (28 Comments)

  • Peter you obviously don’t smoke or drink and are at an optimal weight but don’t have private health insurance. To jump the queue you want others to suffer… What a plonker!

    Reply
  • alan 21/07/12 #

    bad decision

    a good hospital. a good facility. serves southside of city really well. now expect hours in a and e in cuh and then a trolley if you are lucky

    Reply
    • To be fair, CUH, the only level 1 trauma
      centre in the country has the south side well covered

      Reply
    • best wishes with your Campaign to have your A+E Restored. I live in Roscommon where this Government closed our A+E 12 months ago Enda Kenny and James Reilly have never met the people of Roscommon t explain as to why we have been robed of our emergency service. We live in fear everyday of hearing of a loved one who has not made it to our nearest Facility in Galway City…. Believe me it is a NATIONAL DISGRACE to see these Facilities being shut down without a care or a thought to the citizens of Ireland.And at what Cost to the Exchequer EXTRA does it cost to KEEP Roscommon A+E Closed as in Ambulances out on Journeys with a patient for approx 5 hours a trip So the ambulance picks up the patient takes about 2 hours to go to Galway and that is with a Siren and blue lights and then they have the return journey back to the depot refuel and clean the unit for the call out………
      so the very best to you all who are loosing your A+E Depts Fight for it till you cannot fight this government will be gone and only elect a new government that agree that the A+E departments are very important in every county
      The ver best wise to all concerned

      Reply
  • When CT Scanning technology was developed every parish in the country raised monies so their local hospital would have one and then the Department under massive public pressure had to provide space and staffing that ended up costing a couple of million for each site and this then created a service that the Private Health Insurers had to cough up for and so our merry little local politics industry went on its way with that collective stupidity costing everyone an ongoing fortune. Local hospitals become an industry in themselves and closing down or consolidating services causes outrage when as taxpayers we should be pleased that someone is in charge and attempting to control costs.

    Reply
  • Finally – about time!

    There are already replacement services in CUH and MUH.

    The distance between SIVUH and CUH is 5.5km, and MUH is 1.7km.

    Is it necessary to have 3 different ED’s within a stones throw? I somehow doubt it. Evidently so do those that know.

    Reply
    • alan 21/07/12 #

      you obvioulsy havent been to the cuh recently. it is absolutely necessary and desirable to retain the a and e at south infirmary given demographics and numbers

      Reply
    • Micheal 21/07/12 #

      The services in CUH and even the MUH far and away exceed those in the SIVUH. If I were to be brought to a hospital in Cork, I would prefer CUH any day.

      What you are looking for is exactly what is very wrong with the HSE. Everyone wants every service in every hospital. This is not possible. Not by a long stretch of anybody’s imagination.

      It’s time we get real about what we want, and more important, what we need.

      Reply
    • No the issue is that Mary or Joe or Fred or Harry who live around the corner will vote for the idiot who promises to reopen an unnecessary hospital and abuse our already sinking Healthcare System.

      Reply
    • Jumping to conclusions much Mick? I live nearer to South infirmary than CUH, and I go to CUH for emergencies. close the south, no need for it.

      Not to say CUH is perfect. It could do with some prison cells and dry-out cells for the drunk, violent and doped up people who clog it up. But I guess that’s a problem everywhere.

      Reply
    • Micheal fair play if you can throw a stone 1.7km in city traffic.

      Reply
    • Micheal 22/07/12 #

      Daffy, if you are in so bad a need for emergency care that you cannot travel an additional 1.7km, I suggest the ambulance service.

      Stop being petty.

      Reply
  • Hopefully the next government will open it and find the money where they should: by taxing the rich and corporations.

    Reply
  • It doesn’t matter where the service is in Cork, what we need is a quality service. This involves doctors making correct decisions on patients care rather than junior doctor pawning patients off , discharging them so that they come back a few days later by ambulance. Doctors need to diagnose patients conditions, get an effective treatment and move them on to primary care. The problem is that the A & E service is like a sticky plaster and there is no follow up post treatment. In addition, for those with a crisis of a chronic condition, the only door into the hospital is A & E and one has to go through all the questions and knee flexing taps etc . My experience of CUH is that the decision making there is very poor, the nurses are fine , in fact they have great patience waiting for doctors to make decision once test results are back then the junior doctor are very unsure and have no support from consultants. We need a radical change to the teaching of doctors in Ireland, consultants should be on the floor of the hospital supporting junior doctors and teaching decision making skills.

    Reply
  • I know someone who had experience of using the A&E in SIVH with an elderly patient and the treatement was pretty shoddy, you’d hope that closing it down would mean better treatment in the replacement hospital but that’s doubtful too isn’t it?

    I’d also like to put in my penny’s worth about the comments about sending smokers/obese people/alcoholics to a private hospital – I’m sure if it wasn’t atrociously expensive they’d much prefer it! And that’s making the assumption that thin people are healthy – not necessarily so, in fact none of us really know what kind of unhealthy lifestyle choices others are making so it’s not that easy to just dish out labels. Should someone with an STD be refused entry to a public hospital too if they’ve not practised safe sex? If we were to be turned away for making choices that ultimately led to us becoming ill, then I think all of us would be guilty of some error in judgement, our body may be a temple but do we worship everyday & keep it pure? No, cos we’re human and we live our lives imperfectly.

    Reply

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