Southern Trust emergency general surgery could be moved to Craigavon 'on a permanent basis'
Emergency general surgery in the Southern Trust could be moved to Craigavon Area Hospital on a permanent basis.
It comes after the Trust board launched a public consultation which includes a proposal to deliver emergency general surgery at Craigavon permanently.
If approved, it means emergency general surgery will not return to Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry.
The Trust moved emergency general surgery to Craigavon Area Hospital in February 2022 as a contingency measure and in response to difficulties in recruiting and retaining consultant general surgeons.
Emergency general surgery services have not returned to Daisy Hill Hospital since.
The Southern Health and Social Care Trust board held a meeting on 26 January when the proposal was approved.
It is now open to public consultation until 21 April.
Speaking at Trust Board, Chief Executive, Dr Maria O’Kane said: “Following the publication of the Review of General Surgery in June, our surgical team has been exploring how we can meet the new regional standards to ensure the best clinical outcomes for all patients who need emergency general surgery in the Southern Trust.
“Delivering all Emergency General Surgery from the Craigavon site, 24 hours-a-day, seven days a week is the only way we can safely meet best practice standards, with the staff and resources we have available, offering back up from sub specialist surgical services, intensive care and MRI, if needed, to give our patients the safe, high quality and modern care that they deserve.
“I can reassure those who may be concerned that there will be absolutely no change to the busy Emergency Department at Daisy Hill which is crucial to meeting the needs of our local population and will continue to operate as a Type 1 ED, assessing patients with both medical and surgical symptoms.
“Daisy Hill has a wide range of vibrant medical specialties and is a renowned teaching hospital.
"We are keen to maintain its status in our acute hospital network, whilst developing its elective surgical capacity and are currently progressing plans to develop the hospital as a regional Elective Overnight Stay Centre, to ensure that more people on lengthy waiting lists get the surgery they need.
“The recent investment from the Department of Health of over £9million to upgrade the electrical infrastructure at Daisy Hill is another very welcome commitment to the future of our hospital, offering great potential for further development of services.
“We welcome public support in implementing this much needed service improvement in our area.
"We want to stabilise and develop our surgical service to attract and retain staff and most importantly ensure that patients wherever they live in the Southern Trust have access to the right care, in the right place with the best possible resources.”
Meanwhile Mark Taylor, Chair of the Review of General Surgery echoed the Chief Executive's statement.
"Some parts of the UK did this 10 years ago. We have no time to sit back and continue to talk. We need to just get on and do.
"What I would say to the people of Newry tonight is that Daisy Hill Hospital is here to stay - it is not going. This is not some machiavellian plan to close it."
In 2016, Professor Rafael Bengoa launched a report citing a ten year plan to transform the health service in Northern Ireland.
The report called 'Systems, Not Structures - Changing Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland', involved setting up dedicated surgical hubs based at the Mater, Daisy Hill and South West Acute hospitals.
The idea is to separate planned surgery from emergency surgery and create elective care centres to help tackle waiting lists and prevent planned surgeries from being affected by emergency surgery.
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