{"id":626272,"date":"2026-09-16T09:12:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T09:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/626272\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T09:12:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T09:12:43","slug":"minister-for-health-defends-saturday-hospital-unit-that-treated-five-patients-in-12-weeks-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/626272\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister for Health defends Saturday hospital unit that treated five patients in 12 weeks \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A consultant-led acute medical assessment unit (AMAU) pilot project ran on Saturdays in Co Donegal<\/a> was \u201cnot a real test\u201d of the system as it had to be used to address surging inpatient numbers, Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill<\/a> has said.<\/p>\n

The Irish Times on Monday reported how consultants rostered to work on Saturdays under new contracts with the State, a key healthcare reform championed by the Minister, saw just five patients over the course of the 12-week trial<\/a> at Letterkenny University Hospital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An AMAU is a facility aimed at providing immediate evaluation, diagnosis and treatment for patients presenting with various conditions or referred by GPs.<\/p>\n

The HSE<\/a> West and North West region, which runs the hospital, said that as a result of capacity pressures in Letterkenny during the pilot period, the AMAU facility had to be used for inpatient surge capacity on a number of weekends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about senior decision-makers in on Saturday and over the weekend to help with patient flow,\u201d Carroll MacNeill told reporters in Dublin on Monday. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s helping with discharge, but it\u2019s also helping to treat people earlier and make a plan for them either to be admitted and treated or to come back at a later stage.\u201d <\/p>\n

Carroll MacNeill said this approach reduced \u201cpossibly not unnecessary admissions, but maybe more conservative admissions\u201d. She said about a quarter of people who attended an emergency department would, in general, be admitted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you see a hospital with like a 35 per cent admission rate or 39 per cent admission rate, it often speaks to possibly not enough senior decision-makers there to support the more junior staff in the decisions that they\u2019re making.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Minister said this was \u201cquite different\u201d to people being rostered to do \u201cclinics and so on\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re beginning to see clinics … on a whole range of different things in the maternity hospitals and some of the acute hospitals … that\u2019s about dealing with, doing outpatient clinics.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the move to a \u201cfully six-day system\u201d would happen \u201cpiece by piece by piece\u201d.<\/p>\n

HSE chief clinical officer Colm Henry<\/a> said the use of the AMAU for inpatient surge capacity \u201cis what we\u2019re seeing in recent months because of the unprecedented pressures during a summer in terms of unscheduled care demands\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said in this report \u201cthere was a marked underutilisation of those beds because they were used in surge\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t equate to no requirement for senior decision-makers to be in. In fact, that\u2019s all the more compelling that senior decision-makers should be in at times when unscheduled care is very busy,\u201d Henry said. <\/p>\n

Regarding Budget<\/a> 2027, which is to be announced next month, Carroll MacNeill said her department was \u201cnot in a cost-cutting phase of any kind\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are about seven or eight hospitals that are consistently not getting it into grip in relation to patient flow and there are others that have come an enormous journey in the last 12 months,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are regions that have done that, that have stayed within budget and there are other regions that have not done that and have not stayed within budget and there is not a correlation between the budget and the effectiveness of patient flow. It is something very different.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the long-delayed national children\u2019s hospital, she said a number of issues were reported to her last month including one about the number of staff working on the site being \u201cvery considerably down on what it should be\u201d for August. Others issues were in relation to surgical theatre floors and ventilation.<\/p>\n

Carroll MacNeill also said there were issues around the bathroom pods in the hospital and said it was up to contractor Bam \u201cto fix them and bring them to the appropriate standard to get the fire certification\u201d. <\/p>\n

She said she was refusing to name a date for when the hospital might open, saying that \u201cBam need to turn up and do the work\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A consultant-led acute medical assessment unit (AMAU) pilot project ran on Saturdays in Co Donegal was \u201cnot a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[5168,97099,1485,103,397,396,2120,61,60,1421,26338],"class_list":["post-626272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-budget","tag-colm-henry","tag-donegal","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-hse","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jennifer-carroll-macneill","tag-letterkenny-university-hospital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}