Letterkenny General Hospital respond to HIQA report which raises hygiene concerns

Letterkenny General Hospital has responded to the latest HIQA’s inspection reports which raise serious concerns about hygiene standards at the hospital.
A prearranged visit was held at Letterkenny general in June.
Poor hand hygiene was found, which in some cases presented a serious risk to patient health.
The hospital says it is committed to addressing any problems.
The HIQA Report identified a number of positive developments and improvements at Letterkenny Hospital since they had previously visited in February 2013.
There were particular improvements in the cleanliness of the environment and hand hygiene training.
Letterkenny Hospital says that it recognises that whilst hand hygiene rates have improved since the previous HIQA visit, the results of this most recent audit demonstrated the need for further improvement.
The latest HIQA visit pre-dates the flooding which effected many services at the Hospital – The hospital says that the observations in the HIQA report will be taken into account in the relevant areas of the re-build programme.
It is also pointed out that Letterkenny General Hospital is now part of the West/North West Hospitals Group.
The hospital says a key action of the Group is to introduce its new Clinical Director Structure and the Group will establish a Group Integration Team to oversee integration of the new hospitals.