Harney’s hospitals claims rejected

EMERGENCY medicine consultants have rejected a claim made by Health Minister Mary Harney that overcrowding in emergency departments (EDs) had improved and was only confined to a limited number of hospitals.

They say the minister’s assertions in response to RTÉ’s recent Prime Time expose on EDs, flies in the face of the experience of emergency medicine consultants across the country and statistics on numbers of patients requiring admission to hospital but for whom no beds are available.

The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine believes it is not possible to solve a problem unless the exact extent of it is acknowledged.