The first new surgical hub has been officially opened at the Mount Carmel Community Hospital in south Dublin.
It will take its first public patients on Tuesday, 18 February, and referral will be by a consultant.
The hub will deal with planned procedures. The aim is to treat 10,000-day cases and minor surgeries a year, and it will mainly focus on less complex surgeries, relieving pressures on other hospitals, in particular St James's, St Vincent's and Tallaght in Dublin.
It will deal with surgeries that do not require hospital stays.
The new hub is fully digital and does not use paper.
For environmental reasons, it does not use nitrous oxide in theatres as an anaesthetic.
It is one of six surgical hubs planned to cut hospital waiting lists and other hubs have yet to be opened in Cork (Cork University Hospital), Galway (Merlin Park), Waterford (Former Glanbia Site), Limerick (Scoil Carmel) and another in Swords, north Dublin.
All six are due to be fully operational within two years.
Each hub will have operating theatres, minor ops procedure rooms, consultation rooms, and post-operative recovery bays.
The South Dublin HSE Surgical Hub will be governed by St James's Hospital.
When fully operational, each hub will be expected to deliver an extra 4,000-day case procedures, 5,800 extra minor operations, and around 18,500 extra outpatient appointments.
The hubs will be open 8am to 8pm, six days a week.
Patients will have their procedure and recovery time and then go home on the same day.
The HSE Surgical Hub South Dublin was officially opened today by Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill.
The hub opened today is in a separate building on the site of the former Mount Carmel Hospital.
It was bought by the HSE in 2014.
People waiting on trolleys in hospitals 'not acceptable' - Minister
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has said it is not acceptable that people are on trolleys waiting for admission to a bed.
She said there must be the deployment of healthcare staff, not when it is convenient but when people are sick, meaning staff are working across the system on a seven-day period.
Minister Carroll MacNeill said she was particularly disappointed over the February Bank Holiday period watching the HSE trolley numbers go from 253 on the Sunday morning, to 592 on the Tuesday morning and back down into the 300s by Wednesday and Thursday.
She added that a similar spike was seen after the weekend just gone.
Minister Carroll MacNeill said it cannot be explained by infrastructure and that it is not consistent across all hospitals.
She said that when people are sick, they must get treated and when they are better, get discharged.
Responding to the Minister's remarks, HSE chief Bernard Gloster said he shared her disappointment.
He said that for 20 months heading up to the end of last year, the number of patients on trolleys had been improved - despite increasing demand - by improving processes and procedures.
However, Mr Gloster added the HSE has not been able to consistently improve weekend discharges since Christmas.
Mr Gloster said it will be brought back to a better level.
