Trolley crisis prompts call for overhaul
Responding to the crisis, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said urgent action was needed from Government amid fears over patient safety, the onset of sub-zero temperatures from tonight onwards and the possibility of a fresh spike in swine flu cases.
The HSE admitted some planned surgical operations have had to be deferred so resources can be diverted to overcrowded emergency & departments (EDs), while a spokesman for the Department of Health could not confirm whether Health Minister Mary Harney was even working as the crisis hit virtually every hospital up and down the country.
* 48 people were on trolleys in Cork University Hospital and 44 in the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick.
* 235 people were on trolleys in hospitals in the eastern region.
* Four hospitals in Dublin and one in Kildare had at least 30 people on trolleys.
* Just one hospital nationally had no one on a trolley.
Reacting, INMO chief executive Liam Doran said it was imperative the Government reacted to the crisis with the same urgency and priority it had given to the country’s economic difficulties and the “supposed need of our bankers and saving of our banks”.
The Department of Health said steps taken to ease the crisis would include opening closed beds, cancellation and deferral of elective procedures and the use of day wards for emergency department activity.
In CUH, 23 beds closed to facilitate construction of an acute medical unit will reopen next week.
But Derek O’Rourke of the National Ambulance Service Representative Association said the lives of patients could also be put at risk because in many cases ambulances arriving at hospitals with patients cannot discharge them and have to wait up to an hour or more.
Mr O’Rourke also said some people were using ambulances “like taxis”, taken to hospital for treatment that does not require ED &care.
Opposition parties echoed the call for closed beds to be opened but Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patients Association said moving patients onto wards would be a quicker way of dealing with the problem.
In a statement last night, the HSE claimed the total number waiting on trolleys had been reduced to 259 by 2pm yesterday.
