Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 5 February 2014
187. Deputy Ciarán Lynch asked the Minister for Health if he is satisfied with the emergency medical service provided to residents of East Cork; his views on the circumstances of a recent incident (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5848/14]
View answerThe National Ambulance Service (NAS) provides ambulance and pre-hospital emergency care to the population of County Cork. The service operates from 10 ambulance stations: Cork City, St. Mary’s Hospital Cork City, Midleton, Youghal, Fermoy, Mallow, Kanturk, Millstreet, Macroom and Bantry.
The NAS continuously evaluates its services to align them with available resources and activity levels throughout the Southern area. The ambulance service is not a static service and as such deploys its resources in a dynamic manner, working on an area and national basis as opposed to a local basis. The dynamic deployment of ambulance resources ensures that the nearest appropriate resource is mobilized to the location of an incident. Where required the NAS dispatches resources from surrounding stations to an incident. In the east Cork area, additional resources would be sourced from Dungarvan, Clonmel and Cashel.
HIQA, as part of its business plan for 2014, and in line with its programme for the monitoring of the National Standards for Safer Better Healthcare, will review the governance and management arrangements of pre-hospital emergency care services, including the timely call-handling, response, assessment, diagnosis, care and transportation of the acutely ill patient to the appropriate health care facility. This review had been due to commence in the 2nd quarter of 2014; however, in light of a number of recent incidents, the Authority has agreed to my request to commence the review in quarter one. I understand that the review will focus initially on the governance arrangements for the service and how those arrangements translate into the safety, quality and effectiveness of services for patients.
I would also like to inform the Deputy that the NAS is undertaking its own capacity review, to determine current and future service delivery needs. This process will examine a number of areas, including staff numbers and skill mix, as well as resource distribution.
I have asked the HSE to respond directly to the Deputy in relation to the specific incident referred to in his question.
