Cuts loom as Galway hospitals €8m over budget

Galway City’s two public hospitals are over-budget by almost €8 million so far this year, which means cutbacks in services could be on the way before Christmas.

Galway University Hospitals, which includes Merlin Park and University Hospital Galway, had spent €206 million in the first nine months of the year, €7.9 million more than it had budgeted for.

The 4% variance in planned and actual expenditure could result in cutbacks for the rest of the year as the hospitals’ bean counters attempt to rein in spending.

GUH has an approved allocation of €265 million for the year. The budget overruns were revealed in the Health Service Executive’s ‘Management Data Report’, released this week.

The detailed bulletin also reveals that the HSE West has slashed outpatient waiting lists in Galway in the space of a year.

By September, the numbers of people waiting for more than a year for an outpatient appointment at GUH stood at 4,541 – down from 13,237 for the previous September . . . a massive cut of 66%.

Of these, 4,240 were waiting for between 12 months and two years; 272 were waiting for between two and three years; and 29 were waiting between three  and four years.

Read more in this week’s Connacht Sentinel