South Tipperary General Hospital welcomes plan for new 40-bed unit

Hospital management and staff in South Tipperary General Hospital (STGH) have welcomed the Minister for Health’s recent announcement in relation to the approval and funding of a ‘40’ bed Modular building.

It is expected that this build will be in place for Autumn, 2018.

The new unit will be a significant improvement on the existing bed facility within the hospital.

The news is welcomed by all staff at the hospital.

“There is no doubt that this will improve the patient experience of hospital care in South Tipperary General Hospital”, a hospital spokesman said.

Hospital Manager Maria Barry has described the announcement by Health Minister Simon Harris as a vote of confidence in the hospital.

She believed it was the intention of Minister Harris to back up the €6m announcement for the modular unit in Clonmel with inclusion in the government's capital investment plan which would deliver a new  fifty bed block with a multi million phased  investment as the long term solution to the overcrowding problems.

She said a lot of work had been achieved in the build up to the announcement which meant that there would be no delay now in proceeding with the modular forty bed unit project.

She said a site for  the forty bed modular unit had already been identified and it would be linked to the existing hospital by corridor.

“The new modular unit will be part of the hospital. We are ready to go now” said the hospital manager who confirmed that meetings between hospital management and HSE estates took place on Tuesday  and “it would take off from there”.

The hospital manager said she expected recruitment for the new unit would start  before the end of the year.

“There will be significant recruitment involved and discussions have already started to plan that “ she said.

She said the hospital had been very successful in a recent recruitment drive  and that between February and October  twenty nurses would have been recruited  as part of an international recruitment drive.

Any new nursing staff taken on for the new modular unit would be on top of that figure and she expected that the international drive process would have to be used again.