New HSE South West CEO wants Cork people to get operations 'as close to their home as possible'

For several years, a bus organised by Kerry and Cork independent TDs has been heading to the North once or twice a month, bringing patients from those counties to get cataract and hip operations in Belfast or Derry, procedures which are paid for — or least partly paid for — out of a cross-border healthcare fund.

In Cork’s Victoria/South Infirmary University Hospital last year, a theatre opened to carry out cataract operations, and over 1,800 procedures were carried out there during 2024, a number which is expected to be equalled this year.

HSE South West regional executive officer Andy Phillips said: “I would want people needing an operation to have that as close to their home as possible, so within Cork or Kerry and at a hospital that’s close to them, that provides appropriate services.”

He is excited about new techniques, which mean that operations can be done more quickly, allowing the patient to return home within days of a procedure.

“If you take hip operations, for example, now hip operations can be done with a 24-hour length of staying, with new techniques, so with enhanced recovery after surgery.

“I would like to see maybe seven or eight people on a hip list per day rather than two or three or four, which we might do currently.

“So there are new techniques, new ways of doing things, standardised ways that will mean we can treat people in less time, and I want them treated in Cork and Kerry rather than feeling they have to go elsewhere, and I want them treated in the shortest time as we can.”

Sláintecare commits the HSE to seeing people within 10 weeks for an outpatient appointment.

“I want people to be seen rapidly — the helpful thing for us, of course, is the Government has invested in the surgical hub at CUH, and is investing in the elective hospital at Dr Stephens, which will increase our operating capacity enormously.

“And then we’re also looking to invest in additional theatres in the Mercy Hospital, for example.

“So we’re always looking to get investment to invest in new theatres across the patch.”

Another route to explore is to get existing theatres to be operational more of the time, he said.

“We do have theatre capacity, and I want those theatres to be working at the weekends as well as during the day. I want them to be working into the evenings. And I really want people to get their operations as quickly as they possibly can, as close to home as it’s safe to do so.”

He acknowledges that a better plan is needed to reduce the numbers travelling for cataract operations.

“They’re a relatively simple operation,” he says. “They can be done relatively quickly.”

When informed of a patient in her 90s who had to travel to the North for a cataract operation, he seems to wince. “So that’s the incentive that I have, the motivation that I have, hearing those stories that makes me want our service to do much better.

“So I know that I’ve got a lot of work to do, and I really will work very hard, particularly on the cataract operations and the hips.”