Almost €280,000 was paid out in financial rewards to hospitals who treated older hip fracture patients in line with best practice last year.

The lives of critically ill patients are being put at risk as hospitals have less than half of the intensive care consultants needed.

A dispute over patient overcrowding levels at University Hospital Limerick rumbled on Friday as the Taoiseach described the number of patients on trolleys at the hospital as “a crisis”.

The proportion of people dying in Irish hospitals after being admitted having suffering a heart attack has almost halved in the last 10 years.

Cork University Hospital is set to become one of the country’s two major trauma centres in a comprehensive overhaul of trauma services — but it will require significant investment.

Less than one in 10 critically injured patients are met by a trauma team when they arrive at a hospital.

A higher mortality rate has been recorded at Cork University Hospital (CUH) for ischaemic stroke than anywhere else in the country.

Health Minister Dr James Reilly says numerous issues identified in today’s report by the State’s health safety watchdog on Tallaght Hospital have already been acted on.