The future of the Louth Hospital...?

Bard

[FONT=Verdana, Arial]The people of Dundalk are being asked to show their concern about the future of the Louth County Hospital by turning up at a public meeting in the Town Hall on Friday March 30th.

The meeting is being organised by the recently formed Louth Hospital Campaign Group who have invited HSE hospital group manager Chris Lyons to attend.[/FONT]

This meeting is open to all members of the public and starts at 7.30pm this Friday, March 30th. A large turnout is expected and the event will be covered by local community radio station Dundalk FM 100.

marco murphy

Good luck with this people, hope it goes as well or better as the 2 navan meetings.

Bard

My show on Dundalk FM 100 had live updates from the town hall including speeches by Arthur Morgan, (Sinn Féin TD), Dermot Ahern (FF TD/Foreign Affairs Minister) and others.

Apparently, there was a great turnout (over 600 people, according to estimates) - with the town hall packed out and people out in the foyer and even out on the street outside listening in (the Dundalk FM Outside Broadcast unit was there).

There will be further debate on the matter on the Dundalk Daily show on Dundalk FM 100 on Monday morning and on LMFM on Tuesday morning, and there will be highlights of the meeting broadcast on Dundalk FM 100 on Monday evening at 9pm.

slumped

personally i hope they close both dundalk and drogheda and build a brand new purpose built hospital on the link road in Ardee.

Would make far more sense to locate everything together and selling the other 2 sites would generate huge income to offset cost of buying land.

S

mada999

Close Dundalk and Drogheda hospitals ??? Are you out of your mind??

They should keep the Louth, the Lourdes, Monaghan General and Navan hosptial and not only that but upgrade them...its shockin how they can close a hospital in this day and age.....what a government...

But dont worry they'll prob be voted back in...

sudzs

mada999 wrote:

Close Dundalk and Drogheda hospitals ??? Are you out of your mind??

They should keep the Louth, the Lourdes, Monaghan General and Navan hosptial and not only that but upgrade them...its shockin how they can close a hospital in this day and age.....what a government...

But dont worry they'll prob be voted back in...

Absolutely agree.

Had to visit A&E in Dundalk today and as I've said on another thread it was far from the awful experience I was dreading. In and out in 90 mins. And the place was surprisingly clean! Staff were great too. Unfortunately have to go to the dreaded Lourdes tomorrow for fracture clinic.

But definately keep these local hospitals. And of course upgrade them. They are badly needed.

And as for that shower getting voted back in... well if they do I'm strongly thinking of geting out of this country.

Access

cannot wait until the canvassers arrive at the door... even heard that some parties are hiring foreign nationals to canvasse certain areas around the country! :eek:

slumped

why not close Drogheda and Dundalk?

Navan could be seriously upgraded
Build brand spanking new hospital in Ardee
Upgrade Monaghan and Cavan also

Selling land at Dundalk and Drogheda would go a long way towards all of this. They could also sell St. Brigids and St. Josephs in Ardee and relocate them

Ardee is the perfect location for a hospital in Louth.

S

Bard

slumped wrote:

why not close Drogheda and Dundalk?

Because, with the expanding population, opening more hospitals makes a hell of a lot more sense than closing existing ones - especially in larger towns like Drogheda and Dundalk.

mise_me_fein

They should build the main hospital for the north east region in Ardee. Lourdes is currently the main hospital but it's location is not ideal. Ardee is far more central. Closer to Cavan and Monaghan and still not too far from Dundalk, Drogheda and Navan.

Keep some regional hospitals but a main hospital in Ardee beside the link road would be a good idea. This may happen also.

mada999

Don't think a super hospital in Ardee is the answer...

Dundalk and the Lourdes hospital should be kept open and upgraded....As they are the two biggest towns in the country at the moment..They will probably be getting city status in the near future also....As the population (and land area) of these two towns is expected to expand we will need hospitals in to cover this expansion.

I would also argue that Cavan/Monaghan should be kept open and upgraded also as Ardee (as is Drog/Dundalk) is too far away for emergencies.

This government should plough as much money as they can into the health service. Hopefully we will get a new government that are more adept at tackling our health service.....To be honest I would like to see an independent study of the whole health board management to see what is wrong. IMO there are serious management issues within our current health service structures...This wouldnt be happening in the private sector, heads would be rolling.

lucernarian

I don't know why outpatient stuff is not being moved out while A&E stuff is being moved out of Monaghan and Dundalk. Time is absolutely critical for accidents. Not for your warfarin clinics. The Hanly report got it completely wrong. If they want to centralise things, centralise those services which don't need a time-critical response. I'm not proposing neurosurgery centres of excellence at each hospital.

Both Drogheda and Dundalk, and Monaghan for that matter, deserves its own basic, 24 hour A&E service. A place to get immediate emergency treatment to stabilise a patient before being moved to a specialist hospital. The people of Dundalk deserve more than some jumped-up health clinic.

And a regional hospital would be best located in Drogheda or Navan for the centralisation of services. The labour issues for the proposed hosptial cannot be ignored either. Ardee in particular already has St. Brigids. It would be hard to get non-medical staff because of that, I think. The likes of porters, clerks, maintenance and laundry staff etc. St. Brigids already employ a lot of those kinds of employees.

This hospital has to serve much of north county Dublin aswell, doesn't it?

mise_me_fein

Ardee is now less than 20 mins from Dundalk, Drogheda and Carrickmacross...about 45 mins from Monaghan and maybe an hour from Cavan Town.....it's the ideal location.

Sure Drogheda's grand for people from Drogheda but it's an extra 20 mins travel for most people that have to go there from outside the town? Am I right when I say this?

Bard

Oh they'll be going crazy now...

A&E services in Monaghan and Dundalk hospitals will close sometime next year with Our Lady's Hospital in Navan losing its A&E unit in 2009.

Instead they will become 'ambulatory hospitals' from where people will be brought by ambulance to larger hospitals.

All three hospitals will see major reductions in areas such as medicine, surgery, anaesthesia and radiology.

mada999

What an absolute FARCE....NO HOSPITAL NO VOTE...

How can anyone in Louth/Monaghan/Cavan contemplate even think of voting Fiana fail on election day??

mise_me_fein

If the new hospital comes to Ardee it'll be a good idea.

mada999

mise_me_fein wrote:

If the new hospital comes to Ardee it'll be a good idea.

Whatever, if it means that there will be no A&E in Monaghan, Dundalk, Drogheda then it is a bad idea.

As it said on the news last night the The Monaghan, Louth, Navan & Lourdes hospitals will be ambulatory hospitals...Now that is a joke...

If you have an accident, an ambulance comes is sent out from one of these hospitals and this ambulance takes you to the new hospital ??? How many people are going to die on the way to the hosptial ???

As someone else here in the thread said. Outpatients should be sent to the new hospital and A&E facilities should be available in all the Acute hospitals...

ExMeath

slumped wrote:

personally i hope they close both dundalk and drogheda and build a brand new purpose built hospital on the link road in Ardee.

Would make far more sense to locate everything together and selling the other 2 sites would generate huge income to offset cost of buying land.

S

for one thing, it makes it harder for people to get to hospital appointments

extra traffic on the roads...

I'll let you know if I think of any more objections :rolleyes:

mise_me_fein

Most people that live outside those big towns have to travel to go to A&E anyway. I'm sure there will be some sort of hospital in Navan, Dundalk and Drogheda but they should really build a superhospital ASAP.

As for the traffic on the roads, have you ever been on the M1?
It never really clogs up mate

mada999

mise_me_fein wrote:

Most people that live outside those big towns have to travel to go to A&E anyway. I'm sure there will be some sort of hospital in Navan, Dundalk and Drogheda but they should really build a superhospital ASAP.

Most people don't live outside those big towns, that is the point....

That the other point there will be skeleton hospitals in Navan, Dundalk and Drogheda..worse than they are now, how is that going to make things better?

There should be A&E in each of these hospitals and then leave everything else to the superhospital IMO...

mise_me_fein

I agree, but please read what I write and not what you want to think I wrote.

I never said most people live outside the big towns.

Hopefully the super hospital does go to Ardee though

DundalkDuffman

mada999 wrote:

Close Dundalk and Drogheda hospitals ??? Are you out of your mind??

They should keep the Louth, the Lourdes, Monaghan General and Navan hosptial and not only that but upgrade them...its shockin how they can close a hospital in this day and age.....what a government...

But dont worry they'll prob be voted back in...

How prophetic your words were. First 2 voted back in, both FF. Not wishing to get into a political debate but the people of Dundalk collectively deserve the hospital that they are getting by virtue that they have had a government minister from the town for years now and yet despite the loss of all the services in their local hospital they still (collectively!) vote the guy back in. It beggars belief.

On the subject of building the regional hospital in Ardee or wherever it doesn't make a bloody difference really. As so many others have said, its the basic hospital services that are needed in the big towns. This 8-8 facility that is proposed to serve the needs of Dundalk is ridiculous. Urban population of 30k or something like that having to go the 25 minutes to OLOL should you have some cardiac episode? Make that 50 minutes should you be unlucky enough to be in Carlingford at the time.
I can really only speak from the LCH point of view but I'm sure that Monaghan and Cavan has similar problems. The whole centralising of orthopaedic services may make lots of sense on a mission statement somewhere but there are people having to travel from the Navan area (which is the centre for ortho surgery) to Dundalk for clinics is crazy. Patient centric service? I think not :mad:

mada999

well Dundalkduffman....I did not vote them back in..I thought people would have seen the light and not voted ff EVEN AFTER HEARING ON THE NEWS ABOUT THE LOUTH, MONAGHAN, NAVAN AND LOURDES HOSPTIALS WOULD ONLY BE AMBULATORY STATIONS IN A FEW YEARS TIME...

maybe people got nervous in the polling stations and forgot who they were to vote for and at that moment remembered all the FF posters and banners all over town..shocking...

Well done the people of Dundalk

DundalkDuffman

mada999 wrote:

well Dundalkduffman....I did not vote them back in..I thought people would have seen the light and not voted ff

Neither did I but I did have complete faith in the voters of the area doing so. It was galling watching the coverage from DKIT on Friday night. So we are in for another few years of rumour and downgrading. :mad: