HSE to investigate hospital’s failure to find beds for A&E patients

A PROBE ordered by the Health Service Executive at the Mid Western Regional Hospital may have far reaching implications on how its A&E unit interact with other departments to keep patients off trolleys.

The HSE has appointed a review group to establish what caused a huge logjam of trolley patients at the hospital earlier this month.

The HSE had to intervene after a war of words flared among hospital staff over what happened.

An A&E consultant blamed nurses but their union, the INO, complained about the failure of consultants to discharge patients the previous weekend.

The review group is expected to report in a matter of weeks. It is anticipated the group will bring forward new proposals to help fast-track patients between A&E departments and wards — in cases where such patients need to be admitted.

In the recent problem at the hospital, 36 patients were left waiting on trolleys in the hospital’s A&E department.

Ambulance crews were delayed as there had been no place to put patients who were brought in.

The review team, headed by former chief executive officer of the Western Health Board Dr Sheila Ryan, also comprises Dr Garry Courtney, consultant physician at St Luke’s Hospital, Kilkenny; Ms Mary Boyd, director of nursing at Cork University Hospital and Ms Catherine Clarke, bed manager at the Mater Hospital, Dublin.

A HSE spokesman said: “The group will commence work immediately and is expected to deliver its report in a matter of weeks.”

A&E consultant Dr Coleman O’Leary had claimed the problem arose because nurses would not allow patients in A&E be transferred to wards.

But the INO’s industrial relations officer in the Mid-West, Mary Fogarty, accused Dr O’Leary of making unhelpful and unfounded comments on what had occurred. She said that at no stage was it suggested patients would be moved from A&E to wards. The problem had arose because of the failure of consultants to discharge patients, she said.

However, she went on to say the INO had a policy of not supporting or cooperating with any initiative which would overcrowd already-overworked wards.

She said if this had happened, it had the potential to compromise the care of the entire patient population in the hospital.

The HSE, in deciding to carry out an independent review, said it wanted to find out why, if the situation had been resolved some hours later, it could not have been sorted out when a problem began to re-emerge with a large number of patients being put on trolleys in the A&E.