Health minister pledges more hospital beds for Midwest after Hiqa warning on patient safety

Minister for health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. Picture: PA

Health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has pledged to increase hospital bed numbers across the Midwest region after dire warnings about patient safety risks. 

Health watchdog Hiqa published a review this week of emergency healthcare services across Limerick, Clare, and Tipperary, proposing three options to reduce risks to patients, particularly around the overcrowded emergency department at University Hospital Limerick (UHL). 

The options include a new hospital in the Midwest with a second emergency department, expanding capacity at UHL in Dooradoyle, or extending the UHL campus with a second site in close proximity. 

In the wake of the Hiqa review, Ms Carroll MacNeill told the Oireachtas health committee: “My priority from a patient safety perspective is unquestionably delivering acute, in-patient, beds in Limerick.” 

The Minister said the proposal to build an entirely new hospital with a new emergency department would require a long lead-in time and would not address the immediate risks.

“Of the three options they are very clearly not leaning in that direction,” she said.

“My perspective is that I look at all of those different options and reflect."

She said there are already some improvements being made to address overcrowding in UHL. 

A new 96-bed hospital block is to open in the coming days as one of a number of measures to mitigate chronic overcrowding.

“Limerick, despite being under a lot of pressure, has had the best weekend discharging of all our hospitals," she said.

Meanwhile, HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster told the Oireachtas committee that a facility in Nenagh, previously used by UHL as an overflow unit, is set to return to its original function as a nursing home.

Labour's Alan Kelly said elderly patients in Nenagh Hospital cannot be discharged due to the lack of nursing home places in the area.

However, the HSE's regional executive officer for the Midwest, Sandra Broderick, said that losing the overflow facility has already had a negative impact, with trolley numbers rising in recent weeks.

The committee also heard an update on productivity nationally, including greater use of the new consultants’ contract at weekends.

“There is a big change happening in some of the hospitals, not enough, and not fast enough. There are very different performances between the regions,” Ms Carroll MacNeill said.

The Southwest, covering Cork and Kerry “is not performing well as a region", she said, while the Midwest “has a bed capacity issue but is performing well on other metrics".

Discussion also focused on plans to hold an inquiry into spinal care at Children’s Health Ireland, as promised this week.

“There hasn’t been an agreement in relation to the nature of a particular type of inquiry. We are exploring all of the different options,” Ms Carroll MacNeill said.

She also said she is “very concerned” with the low number of families approved for treatment abroad for scoliosis and spina bifida so far.