University Hospital to close for August

Date Published: 25-Apr-2008

The Health Service Executive is formulating plans for a virtual shutdown of University Hospital Galway — excluding Accident and Emergency — for an entire month of August.

The Galway City Tribune has learned that the HSE West is working on a proposal to instruct consultants that no referrals, outside of emergencies, should be made to the city hospital system for the entire month.

Under the plans which this newspaper understands are currently under consideration, outpatient clinics will also be closed for three or fourweeks in August. It is understood that the plans were discussed at a Medical Board meeting last Thursday, and subsequently at other meetings this week between the HSE, hospital management and staff.

The HSE issued a statement this week that pointedly failed to rule out this bleak prospect.

“No decision has been made in relation to service arrangements for August,” it said. The custom in recent years has been that outpatient clinics and non-urgent admissions at UHG including planned surgery do not go-ahead during the Galway Races, primarily because of traffic levels in the city that week.

However, it has emerged that the HSE wants this extended to at least three, and possibly all four, weeks of August in order to reduce staff costs.

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