CUH specialist unit used as overflow ward

A seven-day service designed to keep acutely medically unwell patients out of the emergency department at Cork University Hospital (CUH) has been cut back to five days as the hospital recorded the second highest trolley figures in the country for the first seven months of the year.

CUH’s acute medical assessment unit extended its service from five to seven days last November but was forced to scale back in July when one of six consultants who was needed to sustain the seven-day service successfully applied for another post in the hospital. He had been acting in a locum capacity in the unit.

The result is that while the 13-bed unit is open at weekends, it is unable to assess acutely medically unwell patients and either admit them or send them home. Instead, it is being used, according to hospital sources, as an ‘overflow’ ward to take patients off trolleys in the emergency department, thereby “massaging the trolley figures”.