HSE boss pledges overcrowding action

The head of the HSE has pledged to visit the 19 hospitals most plagued by emergency department (ED) overcrowding in an effort to bring the trolley numbers under control.

Speaking on RTÉ radio, HSE director general Tony O’Brien said he would be visiting the “19 most challenged hospitals” to see what could be done locally to prevent a repeat of the kind of chaotic overcrowding that occurred during winter last year.

Mr O’Brien, who announced this week that he was taking over from Liam Woods, his national director of acute hospitals, as joint chair of an emergency department taskforce, said he had the experience and the authority “to create the kind of conditions” to “get a better outcome than we might otherwise get”.

Among his motivations for taking on the job for the next five months was the fact that, in terms of trolley numbers, “we’re [the HSE] not where we need to be at this time of year”.

There were 313 people on trolleys yesterday.

Secondly, Mr O’Brien said he has some “recent direct experience of bringing patients into EDs” having spent time with the ambulance services and the aeromedical service. “So I’ve held patients’ hands as they’ve been brought in to crowded EDs and we have to do better — my direct experience drives me to want to do this”.

Thirdly, he had the authority to order different strands of the health service, including the hospital groups and the nine new community healthcare organisations, to pull together to create the right conditions.

Mr O’Brien’s move comes amid reports that Health Minister Leo Varadkar had advised members of the taskforce implementation group that “heads would roll” unless the situation improved.

Mr O’Brien said yesterday that the email in which the threat was issued “wasn’t sent to me although I did see it”.

“I share his concern that we need to do better in order to ensure that things are not worse than last year,” Mr O’Brien said.

Mr O’Brien said he thought the people to whom Mr Varadkar was issuing the warning may have been those whose “performance and accountability rest with me”, and that the minister “potentially has the power to sack me”.

Mr O’Brien said he had “no magic wand” to create a situation whereby there would be no patients on trolleys this winter and that he couldn’t “magic up” more ED consultants. However, he added that there had been a number of initiatives introduced including up to 300 extra beds in the community and a reduction in waiting times for the nursing home support scheme, Fair Deal.

The emergency department taskforce is set to meet again on October 12 “to see how far we’ve got in terms of preparation for the winter”, Mr O’Brien said, but in particular to ensure there was no reduction of community services over the Christmas period, “which can be a particular issue when things open up again in early January”.