The GHA Director General, Prof Patrick Geoghegan would like to wish all GHA staff and wider community a very happy and healthy New Year. As expected, the festive period was a particularly busy time for the GHA due to flu, COVID and other viruses which are expected at this time of year but more prevalent after periods of isolation during the pandemic.
The GHA asked the public for its support before the festive period by acting responsibly and using self-care and our community pharmacies when possible before attending A&E or booking a GP appointment. The Director General would like to thank the public for their cooperation on this and for following our advice. This has allowed us to manage extremely well over the festive period. All GHA staff must also be thanked for this, without them it would be impossible to deliver the level of service the community expect from the GHA and avoid the types of challenges that are being experienced in other countries at this time.
Just to provide people with a snapshot of the activity over the Holliday period: from Friday 23rd December to 2nd January 2023 a total of 2440 GP appointments were provided as well as 1283 phone calls being received to our 111 clinical helpline. Additionally, the A&E department saw over 800 attendances in the same period with all emergencies being dealt with immediately. For all non-emergency attendances to A&E, the average waiting time in the period was from arrival to triage was 11 minutes. Thereafter the average wait time from arrival to seen by doctor was one hour fifteen minutes with the most urgent life threatening cases being seen immediately.
There were also a total of 168 admissions at St Bernard’s Hospital.
The GHA Director General, Prof Patrick Geoghegan, said: “I would like personally to thank every single member of staff as well as the entire community for their support throughout the Holliday period. We have been very busy, as is the case every year, but we were able to manage well thanks to your support. We look forward to 2023 with optimism and excitement for further reforms within the GHA to make our service even better and further improve PCC communications and waiting times. Please don’t forget that the flu season and COVID virus is still around and we strongly recommend that anyone with flue and cold symptoms use self-care and our community pharmacists in the first instance and only book a GP appointment if you really need one. This will ensure that anyone who really needs a GP appointment is able to get one.
I wish you and your families a very happy and healthy 2023 and look forward to keeping you updated on changes over the coming year.”
ENDS
