Elective/Non Urgent Radiology services resuming in Mayo University Hospital

The team at Mayo University Hospital (MUH) are continuing to work towards the resumption of services which had paused or were restricted over the last number of months due to COVID-19.

As part of this work, the Radiology Department are putting measures in place to ensure that patients can access plain radiography/ ‘x-ray’, MRI, CT, Ultrasound and other diagnostic and interventional procedures in a safe way.

Commenting, Dr Ronan Ryan, Consultant Radiologist and Associate Clinical Director for Radiology at MUH said, “Radiology Staff in MUH worked extremely hard over the last number of months to ensure that patients who urgently required essential radiological imaging and procedures were accommodated. As the number of patients with COVID 19 in the community decreases, we have been working to restore our routine / less urgent radiology services.

“As part of this process, we are increasing the scope of radiological services, particularly ultrasound and plain radiography/ ‘x-ray’, that we provide in the community so less patients will have to come to hospital for this type of imaging. This is being accomplished with the support of our HSE community colleagues in Primary Care Centres. This also means that more routine patients are not competing for access to our hospital radiology facilities with more urgent inpatients and helps the hospital manage social distancing requirements by reducing the number of patients attending the hospital for ultrasound.”

Commenting Catherine Donohoe Hospital Manager, Mayo University Hospital added, “We are continuing the resumption of our services here in MUH in a safe manner – while this is challenging – our priority is protecting our patients and staff and we are continuing to look at new and innovative ways we can provide care to patients in these unprecedented times.

“As part of these efforts the radiology team at MUH have increased their working day so we can continue to see as many patients as is safely possible. We are very conscious that we have patients waiting for scans because we had to reduce our level of service over the last number of months.

“We now have two ultra sound services in the community – one in Castlebar Primary Care Centre and the other in Claremorris. Our radiology manager Eddie Conran and the full team including our consultants, our radiography staff and our clerical support staff are all really committed to maximising our patients’ access to radiology services. Over the coming weeks we will continue to increase the number of scans we are providing including CT and MRI and we are working hard to restore the number of scans we provide daily to the level provided before COVID-19.”

Video link: Dr Ronan Ryan, Consultant Radiologist and Associate Clinical Director for Radiology at Mayo University Hospital talks about the resumption of elective and non-urgent radiology services at the hospital and providing ultrasound imaging from Primary Care Centres: https://twitter.com/saoltagroup/status/1288851744282284032 or https://bit.ly/2D0Yjji.