Record number wait in A&E: Enough beds for our buck?

In recent days Minister for Health Simon Harris acknowledged that thousands of extra beds are needed at acute hospitals or community facilities if anticipated demand is to be met.

The minister conceded that even after planned reforms are implemented — whenever that might be — “you can take it with a degree of certainty that it is going to require thousands of more beds in acute hospitals and in the community”.

That package of reforms includes a commitment to trying to have more work carried out in primary care but whether that would have had a positive impact on the record number of people — 656 — in hospitals waiting for a bed remains to be seen. This new figure has been driven by a particularly virulent flu outbreak. Australia and New Zealand have seen hospital admission numbers double this winter due to the spread of flu. Despite that the overcrowding is all too predictable. Winter comes bringing its inevitable sicknesses and underresourced and under-staffed emergency wards are overrun.

Speaking on RTÉ yesterday, emergency medicine consultant Dr Fergal Hickey pointed out that our hospital bed figures are among the lowest in the OECD but our health spending is among the highest. This assertion points to another layer of confusion in this rolling crisis. It also seems to demand that before Mr Harris commits any more resources to this bottomless pit that our health service match the cost/bed ratios achieved by our international peers.