Published: Friday, 30th July, 2010 1:45pm

Tullamore hospital €1m over budget by April end

The operating cost of the Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore exceeded its budget by €1m during the first four months of 2010.

This figure was published by the HSE's hospital performance information system, HealthStat.

A sum of €27.3m was budgeted for the operation of the facility during the first third of the year, but the hospital's actual spend during that time was €28.3m.

The most recent HealthStat report to be published, which was for the month of April, gave the hospital a rating of 'good' in 9 of the 19 categories in which its performance was assessed, with 'poor' ratings received in 8 categories and the remaining two performance areas deemed 'average'.

Among the areas where the hospital performed well was in the length of time patients had to wait to be transferred from the Emergency Department to acute admission.

Just four patients waited for more than 12 hours for acute admission from the Emergency Department, according to the report.

However the waiting times for children's elective surgery in Tullamore were deemed to be unacceptable, with 37 children waiting between six and 12 months for procedures, and a further two children on a waiting list for over a year.

The report also highlighted the high level of staff hours lost to absenteeism in April.

The hospital lost approximately 6% of staff hours to absenteeism, breaching the HSE target of not losing more than 3.5%.