The Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has claimed that a new plan of action will be developed over the next few weeks by the department of health to tackle the crisis at the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise.
The news comes after the HIQA report published yesterday had found a number of failures and malpractice at the hospital. Mr Varadkar has promised to implement all of the findings of the HIQA report into conditions at Portlaoise. The report had found had serious discrepancies which included mistreatment of patients and sustandard hospital conditions.
Mr Varadkar says he strongly believes that services at Portlaoise can be improved and strengthened: “What we need to do in the next couple of weeks is to develop a new action plan for Portlaoise that will ensure that all services that are viable are safe and properly resourced. He added: “And if services are not viable, because there are not enough patients to support them, well then those services will have to be discontinued.”