Simon Harris’s best ‘not enough’ without raising capacity

Simon Harris is “the latest in a long line of health ministers who are ‘doing their best’,” but it’s not enough, a leading economist has said.

Professor Ray Kinsella said it will “never be enough” until cabinets “get real about the economics of acute healthcare” or “voters get serious about displacing administrations that are not doing enough”.

“What’s happening in A&Es around the country is not a crisis... it’s what happens every year... same news stories, same earnest advice — ‘go to your GP’.

“It’s brutally basic. There’s not enough ‘capacity’ aka beds, nursing staff and theatre slots,” he said.

Prof Kinsella’s comments are in the context of chaotic overcrowding in emergency departments (EDs) with trolley figures hitting a record high of 612 this week.

The overcrowding raises the threat of rapid transmission of infectious disease at a time when influenza rates have jumped dramatically and the winter vomiting bug has forced bed closures as part of infection control measures.

Consultant microbiologist Maureen Lynch, who works in the Mater public and private hospitals, said they could quickly diagnose the ‘flu or norovirus (winter vomiting bug) in the ED if they were equipped to do so, but that it was “a cost issue”.

Instead, patients are sitting on trolleys or they were being admitted onto wards while awaiting diagnosis, “extending the risk of infection” to staff, patients and other parts of the hospital.

At the Mercy University Hospital in Cork, 30 patients were on trolleys yesterday. Consultant in Emergency Medicine Dr Adrian Murphy said the hospital “exhausted all its escalation processes and procedures” and every single bed was occupied.

“This is the time of year when we would expect to have the most bed capacity in the system but clearly we don’t,” he said.

So far at MUH, 36 patients have tested positive for flu and an average of six beds were closed each day for the last fortnight as part of infection control. At Cork University Hospital, up to 16 beds have been closed, although a spokesperson said this is set to improve in coming days.

At University Hospital Limerick, 66 seasonal flu cases have been confirmed. In addition, one ward is closed to admissions to contain the winter vomiting bug.

Dr Peadar Gilligan, consultant in emergency medicine at Beaumont Hospital, said of overcrowding: “It’s not because of seasonal issues or a spike in flu cases. It’s because politicians knowingly and deliberately took 1,600 beds out of our hospitals”, conditions for doctors and GP resources.

Yesterday, Siptu ambulance workers warned that patients at 15 hospitals were experiencing delays of one to three hours in being transferred from the care of ambulance staff to the ED team.