New Hospital Group for the West / North West

Bill Maher, CEO of the Galway and Roscommon University Hospital Group welcomed the Minister’s announcement today which set out the composition of the new hospital group for the West / North West. He said, “Today’s announcement is good news for the people living along the Western seaboard. The new hospital group will have autonomy to manage resources, both funding and staffing, in a way that is appropriate to the needs of the patients we treat. The group will work to national standards of quality and care which set out to ensure that the quality of care is consistent across all hospitals in the country. We will implement the national care programmes and the small hospitals framework and play to the strengths of each of the hospitals in the new group so that each hospital will develop services of which their locality will be proud.
 
“Noel Daly was appointed by the Minister for Health last June as Chair of the Galway and Roscommon University Hospital Group and five non-Executive Directors were appointed in January of this year. The remit of the board is to develop effective corporate and clinical governance structures for the group along with quality and safety systems of care for patients. Much of this work has been completed and we will now work to integrate the new hospitals into a common governance arrangement and put structures in place to bring the hospitals to the next level of performance and accountability. All of this will be done in a manner that is transparent to the people of the region with a number of board meetings being held in public; the first of these will take place in June in Galway.
 
“As a new hospital group we will be empowered and accountable locally, we will implement national programmes and standards and we will be results driven so that we are funded for treating patients (money following the patient) and in that way rewarded for good performance which ultimately means better and quicker access to safe services for our patients.
 
“The Galway and Roscommon University Hospital Group was one of the first two set up in the country in January 2012. The progress the Group made in the first year and a half in terms of improvements in the services provided to patients - reduced ED waiting times, meeting the inpatient waiting list targets, developing services at Roscommon Hospital - demonstrates the success of establishing hospital groups/trusts as part of a programme of reform of the Irish health system.
 
“One thing we will need to agree on pretty quickly is the name of the new hospital group and ensure that it encapsulates all of the member hospitals. I look forward to meeting the challenges that the expanded hospital group will bring and remain committed to developing this hospital group to ensure that we provide high quality and safe patient care to the people in this region”.