Search Results for 'Tony Canavan'

Reducing overtime and agency spending and optimising income collection from private health insurance companies are ways being earmarked by the HSE West to help it cut costs and meet its reduced budget this year.

Galway University Hospitals is set to meet its target of a nine month waiting list for adult inpatients and a 20-week waiting time for children by September.

The chairman of HSE West, Padraig Conneely, has stated that the serious delay in orthopaedic appointments for those on waiting list must have caused some people to die from pain.

A relaxation of the smoking ban in the grounds of Merlin Park Hospital in Galway has been agreed by members of HSE West following a call by chairman, Fine Gael Councillor Padraic Conneely, for more flexibility on the issue. At its May meeting this week councillors agreed that a designated area should be set aside for smokers, in place of the current protocol that obliges people to walk up to half a mile to a blue line at the hospital entrance.

Abseentism rates at Galway University hospitals have dropped significantly in the past four months.

The issue of smoking outside public hospitals in Galway was raised at the Health Forum West meeting this month once more by chairman, Padraig Conneely, who stated there were problems for smokers wanting to have a cigarette since the ban was introduced last month.

Patients did not show up for 35,000 outpatient appointments at Galway University Hospitals (UHG and Merlin Park) last year.

The absence at HSE West meetings of the newly appointed chief executive officer with responsibility over Mayo, Galway, and Roscommon hospitals was heavily criticised at the forum’s most recent meeting on Tuesday last.

From yesterday, Galway University Hospitals (GUH) has introduced a smoke free campus policy on National No Smoking Day which means that patients and visitors will no longer be allowed to smoke in areas near the entrance and must leave the grounds to do so.

A former vice chairperson of the HSE West’s regional health forum is calling on the health authority to rethink its decision to close St Francis Nursing home in Upper Newcastle as a residential facility.