Saolta confirms five additional infant cases under review at Portiuncula Hospital
GBFM NewsGalway Bay FM News Desk
Galway Bay fm newsroom – The Saolta umbrella hospital group has confirmed that it is reviewing five additional cases involving infant care at Portiuncula.
The Health Care Group says that the cases are not part of the eighteen case ‘review of maternity services’ underway at the hospital since last year.
In a statement issued to Galway Bay fm news, Saolta has confirmed that the five additional cases under review at Portiuncula are fully independent of the maternity services review underway since March 2015.
That review is examining some eighteen cases, and was launched following the death of two babies during childbirth in 2014.
The group says that the additional five cases involve a combination of internal reviews and reviews being undertaken with the involvement of external experts.
Saolta says it is in ongoing communication with the five families involved – and the timescales of those reviews do not have any bearing on the timeframe of the ongoing review of maternity services.
It also says it has apologised to the families for the delays in completing that review – a delay it’s attributing to the complexity and scale of the work to be undertaken.
The process was originally envisioned to take about five months, but some sixteen months later there’s still no end in sight – and Saolta has given no indication as to how long the reviews of the additional five cases will take to complete.
Saolta says regular audits at the maternity unit at Portiuncula have confirmed that there are no continuing patient safety concerns arising from issues identified during the course of the review.