€28m emergency department faces surge in patients

A €28m emergency department set to open at University Hospital Limerick on Monday already faces a huge increase in patient numbers.

The hospital’s ED, the busiest in the country, has been condemned as unsafe for patients and staff. Last year it cared for 65,000 patients.

Year-on-year figures have been rising by about 5%, but ED consultant Cormac Mehigan said experience from other countries shows that when a new ED opens, it will draw an additional 10% in patient numbers on top of the usual increment: “Just like any other new facility, people will want to come.”

He said the new ED block at the Dooradoyle complex will radically improve patient care: “The new facilities will enhance the experience for patients and improve flow through the hospital. The new facility has three times the space of the current ED and this will help greatly with overcrowding.”

Thirty specially trained ED nurses have been recruited, adding to the complement of 70, and the number of consultants is being increased from five to 12. A 20-minute target has been set for walk-in patients before they are triaged and assessed.

Emergency cases will be resuscitated and CT scanned in the one ‘pod’ — doing away with the current system whereby red-alert cases are moved from one area of the hospital to another between resuscitation and scan.

Dr Mehigan said: “The most significant diagnostic innovation is the mobile CT scanner in the resuscitation area. This will allow us to bring the scanner to the sickest and most seriously injured patients rather than having to bring the patient to be scanned. This state-of-the-art scanner is the first of its kind in Ireland and just one of the ways in which patients attending our new ED will receive a much-enhanced service.”

Children make up about 25% of admissions to ED.

The current department has six paediatric bays — the new block has eight, which can be increased to 10 through a flexi-layout system.

Consultant paediatrician Dr John Twomey said, in the past, children and adults were seen in the same ED area, meaning children were often exposed to distressing scenes of adult emergency care. “We are excited at the prospect now of having single rooms for assessment of children,” he said.