Anger at ongoing plight of patients

ALMOST 500 patients were still on hospital trolleys yesterday as it emerged that 1,672 beds are currently closed in the hospital system.

According to the latest figures issued yesterday by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), 492 people were on trolleys in the country’s hospitals yesterday, down from the record peak of 569 on Wednesday.

Anger at the continuing plight of patients on trolleys — or in some cases, chairs — heightened, however, with hospital consultants claiming the problem has existed for more than 20 years without being adequately addressed.

Yesterday figures showed 193 people on trolleys in hospitals in the eastern region and 299 in hospitals elsewhere around the country.

Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital was worst affected with 35 people on trolleys, followed by Cork University Hospital with 34, the same number as in the Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Tallaght.

However, the INMO also published a list of the 1,672 closed beds in the hospital system.

It details how 62 beds are closed in Beaumont Hospital and another 62 beds closed in Cork University Hospital — two of the hospitals worst affected by overcrowding in recent days.

Even smaller hospitals have a large number of beds out of commission: 66 beds are closed in Sligo General Hospital, 56 beds are closed in Monaghan General Hospital and 97 beds are closed in Louth General Hospital.

INMO general secretary Liam Doran said: “These closed beds, which are both acute and continuing care beds, must be re-opened to ease the current crisis and to give patients back their dignity.”

Consultants and senior medical professionals have also criticised the long-term failure to tackle the problem of emergency department & overcrowding.

Patrick Plunkett, consultant in the Department of Emergency Medicine in St James’s Hospital in Dublin, said there had been “a surge in demand” but that his hospital was the least badly hit of major hospitals.

“It’s a jam, getting people into beds that already have patients in them,” he told Newstalk radio. “Seasonal factors have a minor role to play in this [but] the HSE is always using the excuse of seasonal factors.”

He said if the HSE was a business and knew seasonal factors would arise they would put contingency plans in place. He said the claim that seasonal factors was responsible for the surge in numbers was “a sham, smoke and mirrors”.

“It’s been going on for years. I have pictures of it going on back in 1989 but it’s getting steadily worse.”