Carlow among worst counties for distance to emergency care
Stock image of ambulance outside a hospital Accident and Emergency department in Ireland
NEW figures from the Central Statistics Office place Carlow sixth from the bottom of all 26 counties for how far households must travel to reach a hospital emergency department. Yet, the same data shows Carlow residents live closer to a GP and a pharmacy than the national average and closer than either of their neighbours in Laois and Kilkenny.
The figures were released by the CSO last week and measure the shortest distance by road from people’s homes to nine categories of health service, ranging from GPs and pharmacies to hospitals and maternity units.
For a small county in the south-east, hemmed by the M9 motorway and less than an hour from three cities, Carlow’s hospital access figures read like those of Ireland’s most isolated rural counties.
Half of all Carlow households are 37.4km or more from the nearest HSE emergency department, according to the CSO. This is almost three times the national average of 12.9km. Only five counties fare worse: Roscommon (44.4km), Monaghan (44.2km), Leitrim (39.3km), Longford (38.1km) and Clare (37.5km), all of them far more rural than Carlow.
The explanation is straightforward: Carlow has no acute hospital of its own. The nearest emergency department for most of the county lies across the county boundary and the distances reflect a population travelling out of Carlow for hospital-based care.
The same 37.4km average applies to the nearest HSE general hospital and to the nearest emergency department or injury unit combined. The spread within the county is narrow: even the quarter of households closest to an emergency department are 35.1km away, while the furthest quarter are beyond 41.8km.
In comparison to Laois and Kilkenny, the contrast is stark. Both neighbouring counties sit close to the national median for hospital access, with Portlaoise hospital and St Luke’s, respectively. Laois households are typically 15.3km from an emergency department and Kilkenny households 14.1km. Carlow’s 37.4 km is more than double either of these.
However, access to some emergency care services will be improved because construction has begun on a new injuries clinic that will be based in St Dympna’s Hospital in Carlow town. The clinic is to cost almost €2m to construct and is expected to be completed early next year.
Women in Co Carlow still have to travel out of the county for maternity care. Half of Carlow households are 37.4km or more from a HSE maternity department as against a national average of 16.8km and 44.4km from an emergency maternity department. It is worth noting that Kilkenny, despite its hospital, shares Carlow’s disadvantage on emergency maternity provision at 43.4km, a reminder that some specialist services are concentrated in very few locations regardless of local hospital access.
The picture inverts entirely for everyday primary care. Half of Carlow households live within 1.6km of a GP and 1.3km of a pharmacy, which is closer than Laois and Kilkenny.
Primary care centres are the one service where Carlow has a strong showing, at a median of 10.0km, broadly level with Laois but well behind Kilkenny's 6.9km and the national 4.0km.
The CSO found that half of individuals in the lowest income bracket lived more than 17.0km from their nearest emergency department, compared with 6.6km for those in the highest, a gap it attributes to where lower and higher income households tend to live.
Distance also varied by ownership: those renting privately had the shortest median distance to an emergency department at 6.6km, while those in rent-free accommodation had the longest at 20.8km.
