Pressure on hospital beds could be eased by a plan to establish Canadian-style "community infusion centres" across the State, it was claimed yesterday.
The centres, the first of which is to be set up on a pilot basis by a pharmaceutical company in Dublin within the next month, will see patients requiring medication intravenously being treated in the community rather than in a hospital setting.
The plan has been welcomed by Minister for Health Mary Harney, who said she hoped the new Dublin centre, to be based at a private medical clinic, would be the first of many.
Jim Joyce, country manager, Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals Ireland, said the first Irish centre would be modelled on around 100 such centres set up by the company in Canada.
He would not reveal where the first Irish centre would be based in Dublin.
"Thousands of patients around Ireland require regular treatments by infusion each year for a range of conditions, and these infusions are typically carried out in major hospitals across the country that require patients to travel long hours to get to receive their treatment.
"An infusion takes several hours to administer and they require extensive resources in terms of staff, space in an already overburdened hospital system.
"We believe that these infusions can actually be delivered in the community closer to patient homes and free up space in our hospitals."
He said in Canada only Schering-Plough drugs were infused at these centres to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, ulceritive colitis, and Crohn's disease. However, he saw no reason why centres in the Republic would not treat more conditions with other drugs by arrangement with the Health Service Executive.
Ms Harney, who opened new offices for Schering-Plough in Dublin yesterday, said community infusion centres were an excellent idea.
"It takes pressure off the acute hospital system and it's a more appropriate place for patients to be treated.
"I had the experience of seeing how successful it is in Canada on a recent visit, and in Ireland we are more than happy to learn from good practice wherever it is because reform of health is about innovation, it's about doing things differently, it's about obviously spending considerable resources, both from the public purse and from private sources.
"Clearly the public health system will be partnering them . . . I strongly welcome it, and I hope it's the first of many."