HSE working on a model to allow it to scale up critical care capacity

A different type of intensive care model is being developed in hospitals to cope with people who are seriously ill with Covid-19, the HSE’s chief operations officer has revealed.

Anne O’Connor said there is going to be a lot of pressure on hospitals and community services over the coming weeks.

Ms O’Connor said they are “still in the space” where they have more than 2,000 beds and around 170 intensive care beds.

There is concern because the demand for the intensive care beds doubled over the past week and hospitals will be unable to cope if some of the worst-case projections are realised.

Ms O’Connor said the HSE has secured a significant number of ventilators and has a good supply chain.

Every hospital has a surge plan in place, said Ms O’Connor, and the health authority has been looking at capacity within the health systems in terms of beds and staff.

However, in scaling up, they are not maintaining a “traditional view” of intensive care units.

“We are working on a model that allows us to scale up critical care capacity,” Ms O’Connor said on RTÉ radio.

“What we are looking at is how we can have ventilated beds in hospitals where they might not have been previously.”

The health authority’s chief operations officer said one of the key challenges is to make sure they have enough staff for all of the critical care beds.

The HSE is working on a staff absenteeism rate of around 20%, but testing for Covid-19 will be prioritised for staff so they can get back to work quickly.

Private hospitals will be used soon to treat public patients who do not have Covid-19, said Ms O’Connor.

Under the worst-case scenario, the peak number of patients requiring intensive care a day will be 546 by April 13.

However, some experts believe this scale of cases is unlikely to happen because of the measures announced by the Government.

Tom Ryan, a consultant in intensive care, said Ireland is just at the beginning of the coronavirus curve.

“We know that we are just at the beginning and we expect to see larger numbers of patients being admitted to hospitals in the coming weeks for treatment for the virus,” said Dr Ryan of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association.

“The HSE and our hospitals are working tirelessly to prepare for the anticipated demands on our services, reconfiguring our wards and increasing our ability to ramp up capacity as required, especially our critical and intensive care resources.”