No money, no co-location

Beacon Medical Group’s co-located hospital at the Mid-West Regional in Limerick is the first in the country to get a final grant of planning permission, after two appeals to An Bord Pleanála – one involving Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins – were both deemed invalid.
However, after months of high-stakes talks, the whole future of Health Minister Harney’s co-location strategy now hangs on events due to unfold over the coming week.
“There are three hospitals that we want to get signed up now,” a HSE spokesperson said. The HSE says it is ‘very, very confident’ that project agreements (PA) for co-located hospitals at St James’s in Dublin and at the Waterford Regional Hospital will be signed very shortly.
The HSE has asked for updates and clarifications from all the consortia but has insisted that the documentation must be finalised by the end of July. The Synchrony consortium has now agreed a date – before the end of August – when it will sign a Project Agreement for St James’s. Synchrony will also post the required €20 million bond with the HSE.
A PA for Sligo, where Mount Carmel Medical Group (MCMG) is the preferred bidder, will certainly take a month longer than at MCMG’s other co-location in Waterford and at St James’s. Beacon would be offered the contract to build these two hospitals, should deals not be signed. Sligo is described as a ‘disaster of a site’, built on top of a hill. The technicalities of joining the proposed and the older parts of the hospital are difficult. The Waterford Co-location Consortium is to build the hospital in that city and MCMG will be the operator there.

Read the full article here in the Irish Medical Times