Hospital wants 250 more beds to cope with workload

BEAUMONT Hospital in Dublin is seeking 250 additional in-patient beds and is pushing ahead with the development of new state-of-the-art facilities, including a surpra-regional cancer centre, as part of a five-year plan unveiled yesterday.

It is seeking the extra in-patient beds to deal with increased pressure on services.

Beaumont has made it clear it believes it should be considered as a suitable location for the development of paediatric services.

While the age profile of the hospital’s catchment area reflects a young population, the increasing numbers of those aged 65 and over will have a dramatic impact on the demand for healthcare services, the hospital stated.

Chief executive Liam Duffy described the strategy as ambitious and comprehensive. He said the new beds, along with the necessary staff and support services for them, were needed for a number of reasons.

Sixty beds are earmarked for a new medical assessment unit to ease pressure on the emergency department. Another 30 are critical care beds to bring the number of high dependency and intensive care beds to 50.

“The rest of the new beds are needed to meet the demographic growth in the hospital’s workload over the next five years and to reduce average occupancy in the hospital to 90% from its current level of over 100%.

“This is a basic requirement to make it physically possible for us to refurbish and improve existing wards, to isolate patients when necessary and to facilitate efficient cleaning - all important aspects of our battle against hospital acquired infections,” he said.

In its strategy the hospital highlights a number of areas of paediatric medicine in which it has significant expertise, including neurosurgery and cochlear implants, and which it plans to develop further.

Mr Duffy said that following the decision by the HSE to evaluate the future of paediatric services a strong case could be made for locating a new tertiary paediatric unit on the Beaumont site.

In addition to its national services, Beaumont provides acute hospital services to a community of 250,000 people and deals with over 50,000 accident and emergency cases a year.