Sir, – Your recent article mistakenly described the report of the Special Delivery Unit following a single, one-day visit to Connolly Hospital, as an “audit” (“Audit of Connolly Hospital exposes patient care issues”, Home News, January 7th).
When the performance of Connolly Hospital has in fact been audited in recent months and years, it was found to have reached excellent standards on objective measures of quality of care, including length of stay, ambulance turn-around times, readmission rates, outpatient waiting times, and day of surgery admission rates.
Connolly Hospital was one of few hospitals nationally to achieve overall “green light” status on the HSE’s traffic-light measure of quality of care. A recent independent and national patient satisfaction survey found above-average patient satisfaction with Connolly Hospital. These results are in spite of a huge increase in catchment area population in recent years, which has increased demand for our hospital services, combined with significant reductions in staffing and budget, and are a tribute to the hard work of all of the hospital staff in the care of our patients. – Yours, etc,