MRI scans now available in Cavan General

The provision of a new MRI facility at Cavan General Hospital will facilitate up to 3,000 scans per year at the hospital and mean that patients in Cavan and Monaghan will no longer have to travel to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and Dublin hospitals to access MRI services. The news comes as Minister for Agriculture and Cavan Monaghan TD, Brendan Smith, officially opened the new facilities at the hospital on Monday. The €2.1 million project was made possible by a generous donation of €1 million by Brendan Murray on behalf of the estate of the late Angela and Nicky Blume, which covered the cost of the scanner. The Health Services Executive (HSE) provided further funding of €970,000 to provide suitable accommodation for the new MRI scanner at the hospital and a further €600,000 towards annual operational running costs. In a statement, the HSE said that the new facility is a "substantial boost" to the attractiveness of the Cavan/Monaghan Hospital Group in terms of the recruitment and retention of highly trained radiologists and other consultants and junior doctors and will fit in with the overall strategic aims and objectives for the development of health services in the North East. Speaking at the official launch, Dermot Monaghan, Cavan Monaghan hospital group manager said: "This project would not have been feasible without the significant contribution made by the estate of the late Mr. and Mrs. Blume. This proposal was put forward to the HSE and had the support of the radiological clinical network, the hospital network manager, the local health manager - Cavan and Monaghan, the Medical Board of Cavan General, the local GPs and all related staff within Cavan Monaghan hospital group." The new MRI service, which came into operation on July 8, will operate Monday to Friday and will provide inpatient and urgent out patient scans on these days. Commenting on the new service, Minister Smith complimented all of those involved in progressing the project and said he was pleased patients would no longer have to travel for the scans. "As well as patients having this state of the art facility in proximity to their place of treatment, the health professionals involved in managing their care will be able to do so more effectively and it must be said more efficiently. A most important benefit of this service will be that patients will be able to get a faster diagnosis and treatment of their illness resulting in reduced trauma for patients and shorter hospital stays. It also means that ill patients do not have to undergo travel to other centres and that capacity is freed up in those centres used up to now by patients from this area," he commented. Minister Smith added that the benefits of MRI are well documented and it is "a valuable diagnostic tool for a comprehensive range of illnesses, disorders and injuries". He added: "There is an impressive suite of facilities, which have been put in place here in this unit, comprising the MRI room, control room, patient preparation areas and ancillary accommodation and I understand that this was a complex project, which included specialised building and equipping elements. I would like to acknowledge the architects, engineers, contractors and surveyors who worked on the project for their efforts in this regard." He also paid tribute to the late Mr. and Mrs. Blume for their generosity, without which the project would not have yet been realised. Outlining the background to the project, Dr. Paul Smith said that the money for the scanner was first presented in the hospital in June 2007 and the building of the machine started in mid-2008 and subsequently began running on trial. Dr. Smith also thanked Minister Smith for his role in progressing the project and other service improvements at Cavan General. "Minister Brendan Smith has been very helpful throughout the whole project as indeed he has been in the past with using his influence to provide 19 beds on Surgical III and a new Intensive Care, the Paediatric SCUBU unit and the purchase of a 64 slice CT scanner," he remarked. "Angela and Mickey Blume have left a wonderful bequest to the patients of Cavan General Hospital and surrounding counties. Cavan General opened in June 1989. Those of us who were there then would never have envisaged today's events. We are very grateful to them and to the Murray family for this endowment," concluded Dr. Smith.