250 patients may be put in nursing homes to free beds
The statistics show 352 patients were recently classified as falling into the delayed discharge category. Of these, 100 needed to stay in hospital for further treatment, while 252 could be moved on to nursing homes to complete their recovery, the figures released to RTÉ last night showed.
Health Minister Mary Harney ordered Dublin’s hospitals to carry out a review in recent weeks of the number of beds that could be freed up if alternative care was identified.
The results of that study emerged after an RTÉ survey revealed 140 patients were waiting on trolleys in hospitals& around the country yesterday.
Yesterday, Ms Harney promised further measures to tackle the A&E crisis.
She said it was her ambition that Ireland have the world’s best health care.
“We can do it in Ireland and that has to be the ambition and that is the ambition that I have set myself,” she said.
Ms Harney promised a range of new measures, first proposed in an ERHA report in June, would now be rolled out, at an annual cost of €2.4 million.
Those measures include specialist nurses, rapid assessment teams, a clinical decisions unit and the provision of multi-disciplinary teams to assess patients. She said the package would not be off the top of the head or an “impatient” solution to the issue.
Defending the Government against opposition criticism of the health services, the minister said she intended taking a holistic approach and had already begun identifying pressure points in hospitals that needed to be rectified&. However, yesterday’s RTÉ survey found 79 patients on trolleys in Dublin and a further 61 in other counties.
According to the survey, Tallaght Hospital reported 26 patients waiting for admission, Dublin’s Mater Hospital had 22, and Beaumont Hospital had 15.
Outside the capital, Cork suffered worst with 20 people waiting for admission beds. Naas General Hospital has 13 people on trolleys.
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