Limerick to get 100 extra hospital beds for Covid surge

Last Friday, ULHG closed a 68-bed field hospital for non-Covid or post-Covid patients four months after its opening.

Modular units being delivered at University Hospital Limerick in February for a 60-bed block under construction at the hospital.

More than 100 beds are being fast-tracked at University Hospital Limerick to deal with an expected surge in Covid-19 and flu cases this winter.

Figures supplied by the UL Hospitals Group (ULHG) show 111 beds are coming on stream, with at least 100 beds being opened by the end of the year.

The additional bed capacity includes the recent opening of 20 single-room beds in a new 24-bed unit; seven single rooms in a new 14-bed block, the remaining seven, will open in the “coming days”.

A “60 (single-room) bed block is to be opened before the end of the year”.

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We are encouraging all our healthcare colleagues to get the flu vaccine this year.#protectourpatients#protectourstaff@HSEImm @HSELive pic.twitter.com/RfwuFL1WNf

— HSE Mid West (@HSEMidWest) October 27, 2020

“With the increase in confirmed and suspected Covid-19 patients requiring hospital care in the Mid-West, it is absolutely appropriate that our focus is on the use of the new single-room isolation facilities in our hospitals for the treatment of these patients,” it added.

The group said that a further 13 beds will re-open in the coming weeks as part of an ongoing refurbishment of older beds, and these are not single rooms.

UHL operates the only 24-hour Emergency Department (ED) across Limerick city and county, Clare, Tipperary and parts of North Cork, catering for a 400,000 catchment.

The hospital is consistently the most overcrowded nationally. Today, again, it had the highest number (43) of patients on trolleys in the country (30) in the ED and (13) on wards.

Last Friday, ULHG closed a 68-bed field hospital at the University of Limerick Sports Arena, four months after opening the facility to care for non-Covid or post-Covid patients, thus freeing up bed spaces at UHL.

The group acknowledged the Intermediate Care Facility or ICF “was a strategic contingency response to the patient flow and crowding challenges experienced in the region's hospitals during the pandemic”.

It said it reached an agreement with UL for use of the Sports Arena until November 27, but that it always planned to hand back the facility “once the additional bed capacity being developed at UHL became available”.

The @ULHospitals Intermediate Care Facility (ICF) @UL closes today after almost five months of providing step-down rehabilitative care for non-COVID-19 patients.
1/3 pic.twitter.com/lHGP29TJOB

— HSE Mid West (@HSEMidWest) October 23, 2020

The ICF was staffed to care for a maximum of 32 patients, and the last remaining five patients were transferred within the UL Hospitals Group last Friday.

“We decided that rather than starting new patients on a rehabilitative journey that would be interrupted in two weeks, the remaining patients would transfer to our model 2 hospitals and staff would initially deploy to new beds at UHL in line with the overall plan,” the group added.

As of September 16, there were around 84 whole-time equivalent nursing staff deficits, or 4.8% of UHL’s nursing workforce, not including temporary vacancies.

The group said closing the ICF “so slightly ahead of schedule” was “the correct decision”, and that the decision was “unrelated to current staffing deficits”.

Limerick Fianna Fáil TD, Willie O’Dea, meanwhile said he believed closing the ICF was “risky”, citing concerns about seasonal pressure on hospital bed capacity during winter months.