UHG ‘split into two’ to deal with expected Covid-19 surge
From this week's Galway City Tribune: University Hospital Galway – which is at the forefront of the local response to the Covid-19 pandemic – has effectively been split into two hospitals, as part of a comprehensive plan to deal with the inevitable surge in coronavirus patients.
The head of Galway’s public hospitals group, Saolta, has moved to assure the public that the system locally is currently coping with increased presentations and admissions of Covid-19 patients – while ‘escalation’ plans involving Merlin Park and the city’s two private hospitals are at an advanced stage.
Dr Pat Nash, Chief Clinical Director with the Saolta Group and consultant cardiologist at UHG, praised front-line staff working in the local health system, and he urged the public to reduce social contacts to slow the rate of transmission, so “we can manage the expected surge”.
“We want to avoid what happened in Italy, where the curve was very acute and there was rapid increase in presentations, which overwhelmed the health system,” he said.
Speaking to the Galway City Tribune, Dr Nash explained the multi-faceted approach that was being taken to ensure, in so far as is possible, hospitals and health system can cope with increased demand for services due to Covid-19.
“The key focus is making sure we have enough inpatient beds, making sure we can separate patients who are possible or definite Covid-19 patients from other patients to minimise the risk of transmission of infection between patients. We are creating a parallel stream of a hospital within a hospital, to keep potential and definite Covid-19 patients separate to the non-Covid-19 related illnesses. That’s taking a huge change and huge reconfiguration of the services and I must commend everyone. People have adapted in a short time to different ways of working and engaged with change all across the spectrum,” he said.
As well as the reconfiguration of UHG, other measures have created additional capacity at the city hospital.
This is a preview only. To read the rest of this article and extensive coverage of the Covid-19 impact on Galway, see this week's Galway City Tribune. Buy a digital edition of this week's paper here.