By Lloyd Mudiwa.
Casualty patients in rural Kerry, north Mayo, west Clare and southwest Donegal were more than an hour’s drive from a hospital emergency department (ED), a new mapping tool has shown.
The free tool has allowed analysis of specific areas across the whole island of Ireland in terms of accessibility to services, such as 24-hour and partial emergency hospitals and GP surgeries.
Among the worst locations for quick emergency access were Kilkee, Co Clare, at 69 minutes and nearby Lisdoonvarna at 59 minutes, while Belmullet on the northwest coast was a 68-minute drive, according to the tool developed by National University of Ireland Maynooth’s National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis. In contrast, if you live in Dublin, which also has the best GP coverage, you are on average just eight minutes’ travel from a 24-hour ED.
While highlighting the importance of such mapping tools to policy makers, Prof Rob Kitchin, NUI Maynooth, who drew up the system, said it was as likely the figures would be used to dictate where cuts were made as to identify gaps in services.
In general, average travel times to services in Northern Ireland were lower than in the Republic, with the average access to a 24-hour full emergency hospital in the North at 16 minutes, compared to 21 minutes in the Republic.
To use the mapping tool, see http://airomaps.nuim.ie/airoaccessmap.
lloyd.mudiwa@imt.ie
About Lloyd Mudiwa
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Can someone tell me why we don’t use the Irl Health Atlas for this type of stuff? Is it a secret HSE tool? Or more likely, does no one in HSE towers know how to best use it?