Naughten warns over Portiuncula's future

Local TD Denis Naughten is to raise the issue of the changes to the management structure at Portiuncula Hospital in Dáil Éireann this week. Denis Naughten said that the proposal to introduce a new reporting structure which in effect means that the hospital is managed from Galway is the "thin end of the wedge". "Professor Brendan Drumm has made it crystal clear in the past that he wants A&E and surgery transferred from the hospital to Galway, and this change to the management structure, is the first step in that process. "The HSE has continuously misrepresented its intentions regarding the hospital, and there is no doubt that if the HSE gets away with this change, that further, more significant transfers of medical capabilities at the hospital will take place. The hidden agenda behind this process is to move A&E and surgery to Galway, with both Roscommon and Portiuncula Hospitals becoming step down facilities for respite care, he claimed. With this new management structure, the HSE can have patients transferred directly from Galway to the local hospitals. "This will undermine existing local services because the hospital will not have the capacity to treat new patients who will then be forced to go to Galway to have their operation, and so the undermining of the hospital would be compounded" concluded Denis Naughten.