Irish Examiner view: Trolley crisis doesn’t have to be norm

The achievement at University Hospital Waterford has come under close scrutiny, and there are hopes it can inspire a reduction in hospital overcrowding elsewhere.

University Hospital Waterford has gone without patients on hospital trolleys since March 2020. Picture: Denis Minihane

It’s informative that University Hospital Waterford has not had patients on trolleys since March 2020, as readers learned yesterday — informative in the sense that such news is now worthy of a headline.

We have become almost inured to the increasing numbers of patients now accommodated on hospital trolleys, a constantly rising figure in news reports for years, to the extent that those numbers have become almost normalised.

This outlook has become the default evaluation of many of the issues in the health services as a whole; the sector has become such a sprawling collection of challenges that it is all but impossible to view it in its entirety.

The old cliche about the Department of Health being termed ‘Angola’ because of the hidden problems lurking there like landmines may have to be updated. The problems are now all in plain sight, and the ongoing trolley crisis is a good example.

What has emerged from Waterford, however, is recognition that those numbers need not be accepted as inevitable. Last weekend the hospital in the south-east hit its 1,000th day without a patient on a trolley.

It is an achievement which has come under close scrutiny, with patient representative groups querying whether increases in numbers on waiting lists are a result of the focus on keeping beds free in the emergency department, for instance.

The hospital manager has added that its system may not be sustainable in the long term and may not suit the environment in other hospitals.

However, it appears to be a victory for initiative and local autonomy, an encouraging sign for a sector often seen as betraying all the signs of a top-heavy bureaucracy. 

It also begs one rather obvious question: If this can be achieved in Waterford, why can’t it be achieved in other hospitals as well?