HSE has no plans to increase number of hospital beds

THE Health Service Executive (HSE) has no plans to increase bed numbers despite lack of capacity being responsible for the bulk of the 22,000 operations postponed last year.

Figures which emerged this week showed 21,974 operations were postponed by 34 hospitals across the State in 2005, because of a shortage of beds.

The opposition said the Government’s failure to deliver sufficient beds had led to thousands of patients suffering needlessly. Fine Gael warned that patients could die if the situation were allowed to continue. Despite the problem, the HSE said in a statement yesterday that it “intends to continue with its existing policy and practices with regard to the carrying out of surgical procedures.”

Asked what this meant in terms of extra bed capacity, a spokesman said there were “no definite plans to increase numbers”.

The chief executive of the HSE, Professor Brendan Drumm, has repeatedly questioned the need for extra beds, saying the focus should be on improving primary and community care services instead.

At a medical conference last year, he told consultants that Ireland already had a higher percentage of acute hospital beds than Britain.

“We have an age profile that is massively to our advantage. We have 11% of the population greater than 65 while in the UK 17% of people are older than 65,” he said.

“If you are suggesting that we need acute care beds of the order of the UK and most of Europe, I would suggest that we cannot justify that.”

Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney has supported his view, telling an Oireachtas commitment in March: “There’s no question of beds for the sake of them. If we had 5,000 more beds today, we’d probably still have problems.”

However, both the Irish Medical Organisation and the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association (IHCA) argue that increased bed capacity is essential if the health service is to be improved.

The HSE is currently engaged in a fresh review of acute bed capacity. However, the IHCA has questioned the need for such a review, given that previous studies have firmly indicated extra beds are needed.

The most significant was the 2002 National Review of Acute Hospital Capacity, which the then health minister Micheál Martin labelled as “the most comprehensive exercise of its kind ever conducted in this country“.

It said another 4,335 beds would be required by 2011.

The review showed the number of beds had fallen by approximately 6,000 in the previous two decades — from 17,665 in 1980 to 11,832 in 2000.