Reilly: Nobody will wait over nine hours on trolley

Ambitious plans to ensure patients will spend no longer than nine hours on a hospital trolleys this year have been revealed by Health Minister James Reilly.

Targets for the Department of Health’s special delivery unit this year also include a maximum nine-month wait for planned surgery.

Last year, Dr Reilly ordered public hospitals to ensure they had no patients waiting over 12 months for elected surgery by the end of 2011.

However, the SDU’s special adviser, Dr Martin Connor, said that 360 patients were awaiting elected surgery at the end of last year.

This year, the unit will work with the HSE to ensure that 95% of patients attending emergency departments are discharged or admitted within six hours of registration, and that those needing to be admitted wait no more than nine hours.

While last year was the worst in almost a decade for the number of patients waiting on trolleys, December showed a 13% drop — an improvement the minister attributed to the special delivery unit that began operating last September.

The unit provided 16 hospitals with 5m to reduce the number of patients on trolleys over Christmas and the new year.

Dr Reilly said it was now possible to calculate on any given day how many people were on trolleys. “We could not do that before the SDU was set up.”

Dr Connor, who outlined the targets at a media briefing in Dublin yesterday, did not accept that they were unambitious.

“If we achieve a nine hour maximum, a 95% standard within six hours, I think we move the emergency service into world class phase in terms of response.”

He also believed having nobody wait more than nine months for planned surgery was achievable, even with current spending levels.

Dr Reilly said the SDU had shown reform works and delivers for patients. “No other jurisdiction in the western world that we are aware of has started to do what we are doing, which is improving quality against a backdrop of significant reducing budgets.”