This winter, the general public are being asked by the Western Health and Social Care Trust to use the Emergency Department for “true emergencies” but to seek alternative healthcare pathways for other non-emergency illnesses and injuries.

This was the message relayed by Geraldine McKay, Director of Unscheduled Care, Medicine, Cancer and Clinical Services during the Trust winter media briefing on Wednesday, December 29.

“The Emergency Department is for patients with true emergencies,” said Ms. McKay during the briefing, noting that she wants patients to come to the Emergency Department when they are in a crisis, whether a mental health crisis or they believe they are experiencing a real emergency illness.

“That’s the message that I want to get out there today. We don’t want people deciding not to come to our Emergency Department, however, if their illness is not a true emergency there are other alternatives that they should consider,” she said, going on to outline these alternative options.

“We have local pharmacies who are brilliant at supporting people with minor illnesses. We have our emergency urgent care treatment centre in Omagh which a lot of our population are now using.

“We also have primary care, we have phone first. We have a number of alternative pathways and from January we will have a standalone minor injuries unit hopefully at Altnagelvin, we’re just trying to put all those in place.

“So I would ask that the public look at alternatives unless they have a true emergency,” said Ms. McKay.

The briefing also highlighted some of the challenges that the Trust are currently facing going into this winter period, and the plans that are in place to try and mitigate some of these issues.

“Winter is obviously typically a very challenging period for the Health and Social Care System in general,” she said, going on to note that unlike in other years, the demands on the system have not decreased over the last number of months.

“We normally find a dip in our summer/autumn period but we didn’t get that this year so we have had continued and sustained pressure being experienced across all our services across this year 2023,” she said.

In terms of Emergency Department attendances, Ms. McKay noted that Altnagelvin has seen a slight increase in attendances in the first six months of this year, from April to August.

“It’s about 100. 100 patients may seem small but with a system that is already under pressure it actually is quite a volume for us,” she said.

In the South West Acute Hospital there has been a slight drop of about 40 attendances in the same period compared to the same period last year, April to August.

However, the Minor Injuries Unit and Urgent Care Treatment Centre in Omagh has seen a high increase in terms of numbers attending.

“Just over 600 in that period and it appears that people are opting to go to our Urgent Care Treatment centre rather than wait long periods of time in our Emergency Departments,” said Ms. McKay.

“In terms of how and what mitigation we are putting in place, we have had some investment in our No More Silos funding and particularly in relation

Meanwhile, hospital campaign group Save Our Acute Services is to host a public meeting tonight (Thursday).

A spokeswoman for the campaign group said the meeting will offer the opportunity “to ask questions from all local political parties and it will be professionally facilitated and conducted in a fair and reasonable manner.

The meeting will take place in the Westville Hotel in Enniskillen at 7pm and will be covered in next week’s newspaper.