The Health Service Executive (HSE) has confirmed that Laboratory Services, currently undertaken at Nenagh Hospital in Co Tipperary, will close in July 2013 and move to Dooradoyle, Limerick.
Currently a seven-day backlog exists in blood testing in Limerick and the HSE have now requested that about 12 staff, currently working in Nenagh, together with all equipment, be transferred from Tipperary to Limerick.
In recent years, all acute hospital services in the Mid West Region; namely Dooradoyle, Croom (Mid-Western Regional Orthopaedic Hospital), Nenagh, Ennis, St Munchin’s (Mid-Western Regional Maternity Hospital ) and St. John’s Hospital Limerick, have been reorganised with all complex surgery and medicine being transferred to Dooradoyle.
Day only Case Work was expanded in Ennis, Nenagh and at St John’s, with ambulance services upgraded by the introduction of paramedics.
The HSE claim that reconfiguring & centralisation of this laboratory service will mean a much improved overhaul for both General Practitioners & their patients, together with savings for the taxpayer of approximately €1.5m per year, while also resulting in no job losses for any laboratory staff.
Geographically, the Mid-Western Regional Hospital, Limerick, is within 30 miles of Ennis, St John’s and Nenagh hospitals, and is connected by a motorway to Ennis and Nenagh. This affirms that all medical samples can now be transported within a 30 minutes time scale, to this now proposed single central laboratory unit.
However, medical samples from General Practitioners here in Thurles, will now be delayed by at least an extra 30 minutes in delivery time.
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