The new chairman of the Galway Hospice Board, Dr Richard Joyce, has said he intends to get the in-patient unit reopened as soon as possible so that terminally ill patients can access the service.
Dr Joyce, a Gort-based general practitioner and coroner for east Galway, said the main aim of the hospice board was to get the 12- bed unit at Renmore reopened as a place where patients could be cared for in a safe environment .
"Primarily, the hospice is about the patient. It's about providing a service to the patient and a support for the family and it must be a centre of excellence and perform to a very high standard," he said.
He added that the unnecessary hardship and inconvenience that had been endured by terminally-ill patients had being overlooked during the debacle of the past 11 months.
A founding member of Galway Hospice, Dr Joyce has been a member of the board since 1986.
He has just been appointed as chairman of the board following the resignation of Mr Robert Deacy from the position.
Dr Joyce said: "I see patients every day being managed at home or admitted to wards in hospitals who are missing out when there is a much more appropriate alternative in the Galway Hospice."
He said the new chief executive of the hospice, Mr Seán Ó hÉalaí, the new director of nursing, Ms Marie Gallagher and the clinical director, consultant in palliative care, Dr Dympna Waldron, were liaising with each other to come up with a management plan based on the recommendations of the expert group set up to investigate the problems at the unit.
"Most of these recommendations were partly put in place before the report was published. There were obvious areas that could be improved when we looked at them closely," he said.
Dr Joyce said he had been contacted by members of the Western Health Board who were dissatisfied at the rate of progress being made and the fact that the in-patient unit was still closed to admissions, but he pointed out that it was a very slow process.
"The hospice board want the place to open and stay open as opposed to just opening for the sake of it at all costs.
"We want to ensure that things will work smoothly when the unit reopens to patients," said Dr Joyce.
Referring to the findings of the expert review group, he admitted things happened at the in-patient unit that should not have happened, but pointed out that where there were humans, there would always be human error.
He said safeguards were being put in place to ensure that such errors would be minimised in the future.
