Patients in 'inhumane' conditions at UHL due to overcrowding
University Hospital Limerick. Picture: Dan Linehan
Patients face “inhumane” conditions due to overcrowding at University Hospital Limerick (UHL), with doctors calling on health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill to act.
Concern is growing that plans for a new regional hospital in Limerick are being put on the back burner until smaller hospitals in the MidWest are improved — a move one consultant said did not make sense.
A site for a new hospital was announced in March following a scathing report from health regulator Hiqa, which had warned last year of immediate patient safety risks because of overcrowding as well as shortages of beds and staff.
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Consultants on the HSE Mid West Medical Board met with Ms Carroll MacNeill last week and raised concerns about the pace of reform.
A key problem is the project board has not yet been appointed, consultant Joe Devlin said yesterday. Dr Devlin said:
These three hospitals are in the same HSE Mid West region as UHL and all work together, but do not have emergency services.
Dr Devlin said: “Of course we need a good plan for how to use those beds optimally but it doesn’t make sense at all to my mind to say we can’t move on with what we’re doing with the new site yet.
“The two have to be done in parallel, because it will be the same patients that will be treated centrally and in the peripheral hospitals when that’s appropriate.
“We were disappointed with the idea the two have to be sequenced. That doesn’t seem to be necessary or sensible.”
HSE data yesterday morning showed 23 people had been waiting on trolleys for over 24 hours at UHL.
There were 60 people on trolleys and 43 on temporary surge beds, meaning those beds were not being used for their normal purpose either.
Dr Devlin said that, by yesterday afternoon, 18 people were still on trolleys.
“They’re on corridors in the [emergency] department and we also have patients on trolleys on the wards, on corridors,” he said.
He pointed out that the Hiqa review found UHL provides “more acute care than any other hospital in the whole country, we do it with fewer beds than any other Model 4 hospital, and we do it with fewer consultants than any other Model 4 hospital.”
Staff are working “hell for leather to stand still” in those conditions, he said.
Ms Carroll MacNeill was in Clare yesterday, where she visited healthcare facilities. She noted that the project board has yet to be selected, linking this to the timing of her visit.
On naming the board, she said it would have been the wrong choice “without having had the basic courtesy of visiting Clare, visiting the hospital, and listening to the people of Clare”.
“I’m very happy I came to Clare before advancing a hospital development board,” she said.
She added that “there’s so much that needs a regional focus, there’s so much that needs to happen in Ennis first, in Clare first.
“More care in Clare is what I want to see. And only then having been here and listened to people, now I’m in a better position to understand the needs of the region and take forward a hospital development board serving all parts of the region, not just Limerick.”
Asked why there cannot be parallel progress on the new site and the smaller hospitals, she said: “It’s not an either/or situation, it must be both.”
Patient group Friends of Ennis Hospital also met with the minister yesterday and called for funding to build an air ambulance base in Clare.
“We believe [this] to be essential as a stopgap measure to ensure fast access to acute care in UHL while we await the development of more acute services,” a spokeswoman said.
- Niamh Griffin, Health Correspondent
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