Health Minister says 'significant issues' exist in Donegal but wheels are turning

The Minister for Health has admitted certain aspects of the health service are currently “not acceptable” but stressed things are improving in Donegal.

Minster Stephen Donnelly turned the sod on the new Letterkenny Community Hospital on Friday morning and beforehand held a meeting with local General Practitioners (GPs) with a later appointment taking place with consultants and Seán Murphy, the manager of Letterkenny University Hospital.

Talks in Letterkenny, he said, we positive, with more to come. Donnelly commended the great work being provided by healthcare workers and also the work within other medical facilities, which have been a significant factor in the steps on the road to recovery thus far. There are, though, still steps to be taken, with the next locally being the €37million, 80-bed Ballyshannon Community Hospital, which is expected to be opened within weeks. 

“I’ve just come from a very productive meeting with the with the GPs and as everyone in Donegal knows our entire clinical community, be they community health care workers general practice hospital-based workers, are working to provide the best possible care for patients at all times,” Minster Donnelly said. “I was contacted some time ago by general practitioners who raised significant issues with me.

“The answers largely are within the clinical community so what I want to do first and foremost was hear from them and what is working for them. We had a good discussion about the expansion of GP services there are a lot of good things happening, and there are things they are concerned about in terms of their patients and the kind of things they want to see fixed.

"One of the issues that's been raised with me by GPs this morning was the turnover of the clinical staff was too high. There are not enough full-time consultants. We've increased the number of consultant posts very very significantly.

"One of the things I've done is bringing in the new public-only contract. It is a very significant increase in wages for the consultants. They get a €20,000 per year fund so they can do innovation, research, and professional development for their teams and their patients.

"Because of this contract your typical HSE consultant, when you include their on-call fees, will be earning about €300,000. It's about two and a half times more than, 15 minutes away in Altnagalvin. It's a very attractive contract. I'm speaking to new consultants in hospitals around the country who are who have come over from the NHS, they see in Ireland a health service which is expanding and has investment with 23,000 employees [introduced] over the past three years.

GPs hope the health minister will promote change and improvement at LUH

The GPs outlined their three main concerns again, seeking an external review, opening of
the Medical Assessment Unit and urgent access to outpatient appointments.

“I know there's a lot of focus very understandably on some of the challenges here and that's what I'm meeting the clinicians to talk about. There are also a lot of good things happening, like the primary care centres opening, community nursing units like this, as well as the investment into general practice, the waiting list in the hospital are falling.

“One of the issues is one that one of the GPs raised - for example - the number of people waiting for an outpatient appointment too long, maybe a year and a half. To give credit to the fantastic healthcare workers in Letterkenny University Hospital the waiting lists are starting to fall. The outpatient waiting list has fallen by nearly 50 percent in one year.”

The meeting comes after 78 GPs and up to 30 consultants sent separate letters to the minister calling for urgent action at the hospital amid fears of a “service collapse”.

Donnelly stressed the need for more a cohesive structure to be put in place, which would best suit patients’ needs, with other avenues available. Improved communication, he added, is imperative.

“I've had some initial feedback,” he added. “We're going to be putting a report together working with the clinical community, with the management here and indeed much more broadly we need strong communications between the hospital and community sector in general practice.

“The specialist team that I sent in are identifying opportunities to make sure that the number of people waiting on trolleys goes down. It's not acceptable that there’s been a 10-11 per cent increase in the number of people presenting at emergency departments, and the time people are waiting as well. The solution to patients waiting too long are not typically found within the emergency department. Yes, they need the consultants, they need the nurses and they need the resources.

“The solutions to this are to keep people well and treated outside of the hospital, be it from their GP or GP out of hours or the primary care centre, the community hub, to make sure that there are resources in the hospital after the emergency department.

“They should have access to diagnostics, access to beds, making sure that the length of stay is appropriate for the patients who were admitted. Part of it is about making sure that the patients are at they are the right level of admission, that we’re not admitting people who don’t really need to be admitted and are discharged the next day and critically, making sure that we had discharged bands, and that really is what this is this is all about today. With regard to the workforce within the hospital, there has been a very significant increase. The workforce has been increased by over 400 people and that’s a very good start. 

“Healthcare for too long has been siloed, with people looking at general practice, people looking at community care and people looking at hospital care and not joining it up. It only works when it’s all joined up and that’s why we’re moving to the regional health organisation. 

“There are significant issues still for people in Donegal. One of the issues raised by the doctors was how difficult it is for someone, say, to get from Inishowen down to Galway. It’s four hours, without a bus. We are going to look at all that. What I want to tell the people of Donegal is that we’re in the middle of turning. Our Health Service is the biggest, most important, most complicated thing we have in our country.

“It takes time to turn and it is going we have things to address but thanks to the huge efforts of healthcare workers here in Donegal and community care general practice it is turning.”

The Letterkenny Community Hospital will comprise of 110 beds including a mix of long/short stay rehabilitation and dementia care with associated resident accommodation.

The net construction cost of the facility is €52 million, and it is anticipated that the new Community Hospital will be operational in early 2026.

“It’s going to be a game-changer - 110 beds, 10 of them dementia beds, it's going to be a state-the-art facility beautifully designed in exactly the right place,” Donnelly added. “It's going to provide fantastic care and as well as that, critically, it's going to increase the number of discharge beds available for the hospital. We're in the middle of the biggest investment in healthcare in Donegal there has ever been.”