Online hospital dashboard lets public view a wealth of current Irish health data

Department of Health dashboard offers information ranging from waiting lists to spending and staffing 

The Department of Health's new dashboard allows people to compare local and national hospital data. Picture: iStock

The Department of Health has launched a new public dashboard allowing anyone interested in health to compare hospital statistics across the country.

How busy are hospitals?

GPs could use the data to see where waiting lists are short before referring patients, Department officials told reporters on Thursday.

The number of hospital consultants rose steadily between 2016 and last year reaching 3,061. The number of outpatient appointments per consultant annually fell from 1,686 to 1,216 in that time.

Analysis is needed on this and other data to say why.

In this case, is it because care is more complex now? Or doctors saw too many patients when the workforce was smaller? Or slower covid-19 work patterns have become ingrained?

The Department of Health's dashboard provides a wealth of data including, in this case, a five-year activity overview of the Midwest region. It is interactive, so you can drill down to view the information for individual hospitals.

How long do patients stay in hospitals?

Patients can see if they are likely to be discharged at weekends if their care is finished.

Cork University Hospital (17.3%) is already ahead of the HSE target to have 17% of discharges on weekends. However, Tipperary University Hospital in Clonmel has one of the lowest rates, at 13.1%.

The HSE aims to have 82% of inpatients admitted on the day of their operation not the day before. In some hospitals — 44% in St James Hospital and 67% in CUH — this is much lower.

Officials said they can now try to find out why these differences happen. Reasons could include nursing home bed shortages or overcrowding as well as inefficient management approaches.

What about health spending?

A graph tracking additional funding and staffing balanced with complexity of care shows University Hospital Limerick as doing the best, followed by Connolly Hospital with University Hospital Waterford also in the top five.

HSE Midwest and Southwest have seen the largest increase in funding since 2019, and the HSE northwest region the smallest. Hospitals in Cork, Limerick, and Waterford have seen the highest individual funding increases and Galway the lowest.

The Midwest had a 40% staffing increase compared to a national average of 29%.

The new hospital dashboard allows people to compare local and national data — in this instance, waiting list performance. 

Why was this launched?

Health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill hopes it will spotlight how different management teams work and make the system more transparent. 

She is interested in comparisons between hospital groups or between HSE hospitals and voluntary hospitals such as Cork’s Mercy University Hospital.

“I think you can see over time the intersection between investment and activity and how that changes,” she told reporters.

What could be the impact of this?

One Department of Health official said the dashboard was set up to address concerns that growth in spending and staffing is not matched by more activity.

Could hospitals lose funding for not meeting targets?

Officials would only say the figures are being analysed widely.

Will it increase pressure on doctors to speed through appointments?

Questions are likely to be asked too on the fairness of using 2016 and 2019 as baselines. The proportion of older patients is higher now, more people of all ages survive previously terminal diagnosis so care is changing rapidly.

• You will find a link to the new dashboard on this page on the Department of Health website.