HSE to spend €450k commissioning shuttle bus service from multiple locations to CUH
To A Service Spend Larry Missioning Multiple Locations Picture: University Hospital Cummins To €450,000 Hse From Cork Is Shuttle The Bus
The HSE is to spend €450,000 commissioning a shuttle bus service from multiple locations to Cork University Hospital.
A 12-month contract is up for grabs for bidders to provide buses, drivers, and other transport vehicles to ferry passengers from bus terminuses around the city to the hospital, an institution routinely criticised for the scale of its car park charges.
The HSE plans to have three stations in place for the service initially – two of them within five kilometres of the 700-bed hospital, and a third positioned within 10km of the facility.
The buses will be expected to run at 10-minute intervals, with a capacity for between 30 and 40 passengers on each run.
The shuttles will likely feature multiple stops between their start and end points.
Additional routes may be added in due course, including to other sites managed by the Cork University Hospitals Group such as Mallow General Hospital and Bantry General Hospital.
The HSE said the service is to be provided between 6.30am and 9.30pm Monday to Friday.
Car parking spaces are limited at the hospital, with hourly rates of €2.70 to a maximum daily charge of €15.
The hospital notes on its site that it does not “have the space to offer free parking to patients who have to stay in the hospital for an extended period of time”, and at present encourages such long-stay patients to arrange for someone to bring them to and from the hospital.
The hospital earned €2.6m in car parking fees in 2019, the highest among any State-run hospital nationally, with Health Minister Stephen Donnelly committing in 2021 to examine the issue of charging patients and visitors at Irish hospitals.
The Government has faced consistent criticism from patient advocates regarding car park charges, a problem for poorer patients and families which they claim has not been prioritised despite a commitment in the Programme for Government to cap the maximum daily charge at all hospitals at €10.
CUH’s intake had reduced to €1.25m in 2021, but remained by far the highest such figure nationally.
CUH is one of two level 1 trauma centres in the country, together with the Mater Misericordiae in Dublin, and recorded 62,974 attendances in 2020.
It also hosts one of the busiest emergency departments in the country, and is consistently in the top three hospitals in Ireland boasting the worst trolley counts.
Some 42 people were on trolleys at CUH on Friday, September 8, though this figure is dwarfed by the 104 noted on the same day at University Hospital Limerick.