Pressure ‘intense’ to discharge patients

HOSPITAL consultants are coming under “unbearable” pressure to discharge patients early to make room for those awaiting admission in accident and emergency units, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association claims.

Yesterday, the president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, Dr Colm Quigley, blamed the health boards for the annual A&E crisis by leaving treated patients in acute hospital beds for months on end. Dr Quigley said the IHCA was totally opposed to the introduction of a revolving door philosophy into acute hospitals.

The hospital consultants’ group, who met Health Minister Micheál Martin yesterday, told him it was indefensible that up to 600 beds, and in some instances many more, could be occupied by patients who could be properly looked after in nursing homes or similar facilities.

“It is an appalling misuse of resources to have up to 20% of the beds in the Dublin hospitals occupied by patients who do not need to be there while other critically ill patients have to be treated in an ambulance parked at the door of an A&E unit,” said Dr Quigley.

The IHCA emphasised that the health boards, particularly the Eastern Regional Health Authority, had failed again this year to anticipate the increase in admissions over the winter months and to ensure that treated patients could be transferred to nursing homes. “Every report on our hospital services in recent years has stated that our bed occupancy levels, which run at 85% to 100%, are dangerously high and pose a risk to patient health,” Dr Quigley pointed out.

It was already recognised internationally that the average length of stay of patients in Irish hospitals was one of the shortest in the developed world. “It is not possible to get anymore out of our present bed stock,” Dr Quigley insisted.

Minister Martin said he realised there were difficulties but work was ongoing with the various parties involved in a bid to improve bed management protocols.

The minister pointed out that were 3,000 nursing home beds in the EHRA and that subvention for these beds had quadrupled in the last four years.

Mr Martin said the Government was committed to providing a total of 3,000 acute hospital beds during the health strategy’s 10-year lifetime and pointed out that 709 of those beds would be available next month.