Health department defends A&E action plan despite outcry

Despite the outcry after two women over the age of 100 spent over 24 hours on hospital trolleys, the Department of Health has defended its plan to tackle overcrowding in emergency departments.

Health department defends A&E action plan despite outcry

The department said the initial focus was on getting community beds opened to reduce the number of people who had finished the acute part of their hospital care but could not be discharged.

“Extra resources are in the process of being provided. The overcrowding problem is very complicated and cannot be solved simply by providing more beds,” said a spokesperson said.

Health Minister Leo Varadkar recently admitted that a small number of hospitals might need to be provided with additional beds to reduce pressure on their services. However, he said the hospital system as a whole did not need more beds.

He also said while significant investment has been made to reduce pressure on emergency departments, major “cultural” changes in hospital staff working practices would be needed to tackle the crisis.

Earlier this week, it emerged that a dedicated team is being put together to visit hospital emergency departments with the worst levels of overcrowding.

A squad from the HSE’s Special Delivery Unit will draw up individualised hospital plans to reduce the number of people on trolleys awaiting admission.

But the general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), Liam Doran, was not impressed. It was a case of “back to the future”, he said yesterday.

“I really have to say
 if we wound the clock back three, four or five years, we’d have the same type of statements from the HSE,” he said.

The department spokesperson said the initial focus of the task force was on the nursing home support scheme Fair Deal, and opening community beds.

“Now the focus is on getting down to issues in the individual sites,” he said.

Meanwhile, INMO members working in the emergency department in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, have agreed to defer industrial action, due to commence today, after an agreement was reached at the Labour Relations Commission.

The INMO had served notice of the action last month over the failure of management to recruit additional nursing staff and address “unsafe conditions” in the emergency department.

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