Hospital overcrowding: Private hospitals to help alleviate trolley crisis

Private hospitals in Cork, Kilkenny, and Mullingar have been asked to support public hospitals as part of the latest Health Department and HSE efforts to tackle overcrowding at Ireland’s emergency departments.

And in another unprecedented response to the crisis, private X-ray and ultrasound providers in Wexford, Portlaoise, Waterford, Limerick, and Letterkenny are to be asked to offer services to GPs so they can divert patients from public services.

Another 63 acute beds are also to be opened nationwide: 28 beds at University Hospital Galway, 15 at the Mater, eight at Kilkenny, and 12 at Tullamore. A discharge lounge will be opened in Waterford.

In the next four weeks, a further 60 step down beds will be made available in Galway, Clonmel, Wexford, St Vincent’s, St James’s, Tallaght, Drogheda, Beaumont, Mater, and Connolly hospitals for patients, who would otherwise remain in an acute bed, while their nursing home application is being processed.

Enhanced discharge processes are also to be put in place across the country.

The “enhanced” Winter Initiative Plan came as the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said that the “the emergency is spreading from the emergency department to the wards”.

Yesterday, there were 578 patients on trolleys or on wards waiting for admission to a bed. There were 60 at at University Hospital Limerick, 40 at Cork University Hospital (CUH), and 37 at Tullamore hospital.

In Cork, up to 40 beds and trolleys have been opened in wards at CUH. However, new nurses have not been hired to bolster staffing on these wards, said the union.

“Because there is huge pressure on management to clear EDs, nurses are being put under enormous pressure to take in additional beds or trolleys,” said Mary Rose Carroll, industrial relations officer with the INMO. “These nurses are already hugely overworked.

“Dreadfully dangerous environments are being created for nurses and patients.”

At St Vincent’s in Dublin, and at Cork University Hospital, relatives of cancer patients spoke of them having no choice but to access treatment via the emergency department as they could not access beds through outpatient clinics.

At CUH, one woman said her partner was “extremely ill” with brain cancer yet could not be “given a room or a bed... He’s just sitting on a chair [in the ED]… He should be a priority but he’s not.”

Earlier yesterday, INMO general secretary Liam Doran called for a seven-day hospital consultant cycle, saying “hospitals can’t sleep”, and that consultants should be available around the clock.