Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 23 June 2016
221. Deputy Eugene Murphy asked the Minister for Health if the €7.85 million funding for the proposed rehabilitation unit in Roscommon county hospital has been withdrawn; if so, on what grounds; and if the funding for the rehabilitation unit has been included in the Health Service Executive's 2016-2021 capital programme. [17663/16]
View answerRoscommon University Hospital is a Model 2 hospital within the Saolta University Healthcare Group. It provides a significant range of hospital services to patients in the region, including extended day surgery, certain acute medicine services and local injuries services. It also provides a wide array of diagnostic services (including endoscopy, laboratory medicine, point of care testing and radiology), as well as specialist rehabilitation medicine and palliative care. The Hospital has 86 in-patient beds, which includes an acute mental health unit.
Roscommon University Hospital plays an essential role as part of the Saolta Healthcare Group of hospitals and will continue to do so in the future. We know that the future growth in healthcare will be in the areas of chronic disease management and day surgery, diagnostics and rehabilitation. The activity levels of Model 2 hospitals, such as Roscommon University Hospital, will continue to increase over the coming years as these hospitals specialise in providing these services to meet the needs of their local populations.
A new Endoscopy Unit at the Hospital opened on a phased basis on 1 June, 2016. When fully operational, all endoscopy procedures will be carried in the new Unit, freeing up theatre capacity for more day surgery cases to be carried out in Roscommon. The official opening of the unit will take place later this year.
The Specialist Rehabilitation Unit planned for Roscommon University Hospital was one of the many projects in the HSE multi-annual Capital Plan 2015-2019 and internal HSE approval was granted to progress the development of the Rehabilitation Unit in 2015. The spatial plan for Roscommon Hospital was approved in the first quarter of 2016 and the project team, comprising hospital/clinical and Estates personnel, is currently being assembled.
Following this work by the project team, the project will move to the next stage. The HSE has advised the Department of Health that funding for the project would be considered in the 2017-2021 multi-annual period. It is my expectation that every effort will be made to fund this project as early as possible in that time period.
