This article is from page 11 of the 2006-01-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 11 JPG
Regional Hospital in Limerick, which is a next port of call for many Clare patients,
ENNIS Regional Hospital had to cancel 56 cancelled 126 operations.
operations last year, and the busy Mid-West The figures were revealed this week on foot of a Freedom of Information request.
The Ennis hospital comes in the lower third of the cancellation league for hospitals nationwide and, of those which kept records, the joint figures for University College Hospital Galway and Merlin Park Hospital Galway were the highest.
The two facilities had to cancel 4,308 operations between them. Tallaght Hospital in Dublin cancelled 2,264 surgical procedures.
On the lower end of the scale, Mallow General Hospital in Cork and Bantry General Hospital both performed all the operations they had scheduled last year.
Naas General Hospital had to cancel 60 operations while Mayo General Hospital had to cancel 15. Sligo General Hospital had to put 76 operations on hold.
According to the Health Services Executive, the reasons for having to cancel vary from hospital to hospital and there were differing reasons for elective procedures being shelved, even within individual hospitals.
In some circumstances, surgery was cancelled because of lack of beds while in others, a lack of specialist staff was the cause.
And, in some circumstances, patients themselves were to blame when they cancelled or did not turn up on time for procedures.