News in brief

Review of Toghermore due in three weeks THE fate of the residential unit at Toghermore House on Tuamâ€â„¢s outskirts will be known in three weeksâ€â„¢ time. The HSE has confirmed that a report and its findings following the current review of community mental health services in Galway and Roscommon will be made available during the week beginning June 23. The review team has already met with West Galway and Roscommon mental health services and is currently meeting with similar services in the East Galway. The report will recommend a future strategy for community mental health services, focusing on the short, medium and long-term goals.[private] There are serious concerns that the report will recommend the closure of the 18-bed residence in Toghermore. Just days before Christmas the HSE said it was closing the unit on health and safety grounds following a fire safety report. The HSE did a U-turn following an intensive and vocal community campaign to save the facility and agreed to carry out the necessary improvement works. However the unit has been in limbo since and no new admissions are allowed pending the outcome of the review. The only work carried out to date has been the installation of a new fire alarm. Galway hospital owed €14 million by health insurers GALWAYâ€â„¢S public hospitals are currently owed close to €14 million by private health insurance companies. More than €2 million of the monies due is outstanding for more than a year while €11,372,000 is outstanding for less than a year. One consultant alone is responsible for a total amount due of just under €300,000. Consultants, who have to sign forms to allow the claims to be paid, were strongly criticised by the chairman of the West Regional Health Forum Cllr Padraig Conneely. He said consultants were â€Å“holding the hospital to ransomâ€Â. Cllr Conneely said such high amounts of money needed to be claimed back and he was disappointed that the hospital hadnâ€â„¢t â€Å“taken the consultants onâ€Â. HSE management says that while the figure of more than €13 million in Galway is still too high, the figure has been reduced. A target of 30 days for a consultant to have signed the necessary paperwork has been set. Legislation is awaited to allow hospitals to invoice private health insurers on the day a patient is discharged, which should be a better solution. Up to six-year wait for consultant appointment THERE are patients who have been waiting more than six years for an out-patient appointment to attend University Hospital Galway. While the waiting list has reduced from 45,000 to just under 32,000 so far this year, more than 10,000 patients have been waiting for more than a year. The patient waiting the longest has been on the urology list since February, 2007 while there are others waiting for a vascular appointment since mid-2008, nephrology since early 2008 and a similar situation exists for the ear, nose and throat department. Orthopaedics has the highest number of people waiting, 4,999, followed by ENT, urology and plastics. CEO of Galway Roscommon University Hospital Group Bill Maher said a major project is underway to reduce the waiting list and to meet the national target of having no patient wait longer than 12 months for an out-patient appointment by the end of November. Work is also being carried out to reduce the number of appointment no shows. In March there were 14,362 attendances at out-patient clinics at GUH and 2,380 did not attend. The average DNA (did not attend) rate for new attendances was 10.5 per cent for March and nearly 16 per cent for return appointments. Difficulty meeting ambulance response targets in the West THE ambulance service in the West has difficulties meeting the national targets for response times. A recent report highlighted the region as having the worst response times in the country. West area operations manager for the National Ambulance Service Paidí O Riordan says the eight minute response time target is a significant challenge in the West and will always be a challenge, given the geographic spread of the region. He said the national target of an ambulance attending a scene within 19 minutes of a call is 75 per cent and services in the west were between 60 and 65 per cent. Mr O Riordan said of the 20,000 emergency calls received in a year about one per cent were calls that fell into the eight minute target response time. Improvements are continuing to be made in the service but the investment required will take a number of years. First responder training is also being certified to volunteers in different areas who will be paged if there is an emergency call within a four or five mile radius. Cllr Padraig Conneely said people canâ€â„¢t wait if they are involved in an accident or are suffering a heart attack.[/private]