Survey confirms nurses’ fears over lengthy hospital wait times

ONE-in-five patients have to wait between 12 and 24 hours to be admitted through the A&E at the Mid-West Regional Hospital in Limerick.

The new Healthstat findings verify nurses’ concerns about the service.

It also emerged 1.5% of patients had wait in excess of 24 hours.

Overall, the hospital scored an amber in Healthstat’s red, green and amber marking system.

However, the Healthstat report marks the hospital’s finances in the red, being 20% or €16 million over-budget to the end of July.

Industrial relations officer with the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), Mary Fogarty, said yesterday: “The hospital has dwindling staff, money and beds but increasing volumes of patients. It is under severe pressure and there is not sufficient nursing resources to deal with the issue in the A&E.

“We are extremely concerned over the safety of patients at the hospital’s A&E,” Ms Fogarty added.

She confirmed unions and HSE management are to meet today at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) in a bid to resolve a dispute at the hospital.

She said: “I wouldn’t have high expectations over what will happen but there is concern on both sides and I would hope we can reach some kind of resolution with the HSE.”

Ms Fogarty said that she hoped the HSE would utilise mechanisms from the Croke Park Agreement that allows for the redeployment of staff from less-risk areas to areas of higher risk.

However, the situation at Limerick’s A&E compares favourably to Galway University Hospital where 8% of patients are waiting more than 24 hours to be admitted to the hospital.

The findings are in a new report that ranks GUH as the worst performing hospital in the country, in relation to a series of metrics set out by HSE’s Healthstat.

Separate figures supplied by the INMO confirm that yesterday morning there were 35 patients on trolleys waiting to be admitted at GUH’s A&E — the second highest tally in the country.

Chair of the HSE West forum, Cllr Padraig Conneely (FG) said yesterday: “GUH is not only an acute hospital, it is an acute embarrassment to myself and the HSE and it has to be an embarrassment to the Minister for Health Dr James Reilly and it is time for a fresh approach.”

Mr Conneely said that GUH would be a suitable hospital to test Fine Gael’s Fair Care policy.

“Something has to be done for Galway. The system appears broken at the hospital’s A&E at the moment. It is getting worse,” he said.

A statement from HSE West yesterday stated: “GUH has been making concerted efforts on the HealthStat over the last year with management and clinical effort being put into the quality issues surrounding the measurements used in HealthStat.

It goes on: “GUH is a very busy hospital serving a large catchment area and the changes required to make improvements under the specific metrics of HealthStat are part of a gradual and ongoing process.”