Health Service Executive<\/a> West and North West region, which runs the hospital, said that as a result of capacity pressures in Letterkenny during the pilot duration, the acute medical assessment facility had to be used for inpatient surge capacity on a number of weekends.<\/p>\n\u201cThis limited the extent to which the pilot could be run as originally designed, and affected the hospital\u2019s ability to evaluate the new approach during this period,\u201d it said in a statement to The Irish Times. <\/p>\n
\u201cLetterkenny University Hospital is now reviewing how patients are referred into weekend services and how the diagnostic capacity needed to support this model will be secured. HSE West and North West is committed to the provision of consultant-led services over weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the initiative one consultant physician at Letterkenny was rostered each Saturday to operate the acute medical assessment unit from 9am to 5pm. The pilot aimed to evaluate whether such Saturday rostering could improve patient access, reduce emergency department pressures and \u201csupport hospital avoidance\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pilot demonstrated very low activity (five patients over 12 Saturdays; mean 0.42 patients per Saturday) with no measurable improvement in emergency department flow, hospital avoidance, admission rates or inpatient length of stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
On eight of 12 Saturdays (66.7 per cent), it found, the unit \u201chad no patients\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndependent evidence from radiology, cardiac investigations and pathology confirmed that the supporting diagnostic infrastructure required for scheduled weekend care could not be provided within existing workforce and contractual constraints.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report, drawn up by an assistant clinical director at the hospital, said agency nursing staff and agency non-consultant doctors were employed specifically to support the pilot and that the rostered consultants received time off in lieu, usually on the following Monday.<\/p>\n
It noted that GP practices were closed on Saturdays and while the GP out-of-hours service in Donegal had been informed of the service \u201cno referrals or telephone enquiries were received\u201d. <\/p>\n
It said in the cardiac investigations area there was no staff interest in routine Saturday overtime, weekend staffing shortages already existed, annual, sick and maternity leave were not routinely backfilled and industrial relations issues prevented additional duties.<\/p>\n
It said there were insufficient consultant radiologists, radiographers and sonographers and that Saturday pathology operated as an emergency on-call service only.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are engaging with our consultants on Saturday working to ensure our services, including acute medical assessment unit services, are meeting the needs of our population across weekends,\u201d the HSE West and North West region said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consultants rostered to work on Saturdays under new contracts with the State saw just five patients over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[60298,102,9045,2960,1712,32863,38827,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-770338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-donegal","tag-health","tag-health-service-executive-hse","tag-healthcare","tag-jennifer-carroll-macneill","tag-letterkenny","tag-letterkenny-university-hospital","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}