Over 300 on hospital trolleys

MORE than 300 people were on trolleys in hospitals around the country yesterday as seasonal illnesses took hold and despite appeals for people to visit emergency departments as a last resort.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said the trolley toll was 309, with 38 patients at Our Lady Of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

Cork University Hospital was second highest with 28, ahead of St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin with 24.

An outbreak of the winter vomiting bug has led to restrictions at St Vincent’s, where the virus has affected 69 patients. However, there was only one new winter vomiting case there over the weekend.

The INMO said it would be compiling annual figures for 2011 in the coming days to determine whether the average number of patients on trolleys in hospitals, on any one day, had changed since last year.

Yesterday morning’s trolley watch figures showed there were 113 people on trolleys in the eastern region, with 196 people in hospitals in other parts of the country.

Six of the eight Dublin hospitals had more than 10 people on trolleys yesterday morning as did nine other hospitals around the country.

At Wexford General Hospital 18 people were on trolleys, there were 17 patients without a bed at the Mid-West Regional Hospital in Limerick, and in Letterkenny General Hospital 16 patients were on trolleys.

Only the Mercy Hospital in Cork and Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar did not have anyone on trolleys, while figures were not available for three hospitals.

Despite the large number of people on trolleys, yesterday’s figure was actually the lowest at the start of a year since 2008, when 212 people in hospital did not have a bed.

At the same stage last year, 511 people were on trolleys around the country while, at the start of 2010, 369 people were on trolleys compared to 378 in 2009.

Yesterday’s figure of 309 is a 40% reduction compared to this time last year.

At CUH, management said that at 2pm the number of patients on trolleys had halved from 28 earlier in the day to 14, a situation being treated as a priority by hospital management.