Western Trust Chief Executive Neil Guckian has said the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH) would make “an excellent regional elective centre”.

The comment was made as Western Trust management announced on Monday they are putting plans together for the possibility of withdrawing emergency surgery from the site due to staffing issues.

“The Trust is determined to make that vision a reality and has been working with the Department [for Health] on plans for an elective overnight stay centre at the SWAH,” said Mr. Guckian.

Announcement

Following the announcement, Western Trust’s Director of Acute Services, Geraldine McKay, said the SWAH had “fabulous facilities” and was a fantastic opportunity for patients to get their surgeries when waiting lists are so long.

“Some of the communication we have had regionally as part of that elective care is we have the facilities here, but we don’t have the surgical team, whereas bigger Trusts, like Belfast, have the surgical team but they don’t have the capacity to deliver, so they are very keen that this is looked upon as a regional piece of work.”

Brendan Lavery, Medical Director with the Western Trust, echoed this, saying: “Overnight centres and elective [care] – this is going to be a regional priority. This is going to be happening not just in the SWAH, but in other places as well.

‘Excellent’

“The facilities here are excellent, the theatres are excellent. They are considerably better than a lot of other hospitals.

“We would be hopeful that when this actually does start to gain momentum, we’ll actually have more patients getting their operations in the SWAH than currently happens,” said Mr. Lavery.