Hospital staff meet Harris over looming overcrowding fears

DOCTORS at one of the country’s most overcrowded hospitals have warned of ‘chaos, danger and degradation’ over the coming winter ahead of a crisis meeting with Health Minister Simon Harris today.

Plans for a 40-bed ‘patient hotel’ to alleviate overcrowding in the accident and emergency unit at South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel were mooted over a year ago but have yet to be acted on.

The hospital is facing another winter with many patients on trolleys on corridors.

The warning comes as it emerged the health service is facing what could be the worst flu season on record as a strain of the virus causing havoc in Australia heads for Ireland.

A meeting is due to be held this afternoon in Tipperary town between medical staff from the hospital, local Oireachtas members and Minister Harris following the Fine Gael think-in in Clonmel. Meeting: Paud O’Regan

‘We have met with the current minister on two occasions previously and with the two previous ministers for health, pointing out the desperate state of our patients and we’re hoping to instil some sense of urgency,’ senior consultant physician Paud O’Regan said yesterday.

‘We had been led to believe, more than a year ago, that this was regarded as an urgent matter and as a high priority to be solved, but really very little progress has been made.’

The HSE sought expressions of interest some months ago for the construction of a ‘modular unit’ for patients but, according to Dr O’Regan, nothing has happened since early this year to progress the plan and it is now likely to be at least another year before anything is put in place.

The HSE did initiate a proposal to develop a vacant area, off the existing day-ward at the hospital, as accommodation for 11 trolleys to remove them from hospital corridors.

‘It has been ready for some weeks but hasn’t opened yet because of staffing problems,’ the consultant said.

‘We have been running at 150% medical bed occupancy over the summer, which is likely to go to 190% during the winter... It will mean that even if immediate action is taken, that they’ll face another winter of chaos for staff and danger and degradation for patients.’

A 40-bed unit was the minimum needed in the short term, Dr O’Regan said, and a 50-bed permanent wing would be needed for the hospital in the long-term.

Minister Harris visited Clonmel last winter and acknowledged the hospital is ‘bursting at the seams in terms of capacity’ and needed temporary accommodation.

Consultants and local Oireachtas members had hoped to meet with the Taoiseach during the Fine Gael think-in but the request was referred instead to Mr Harris.

South Tipperary General is regularly one of the most overcrowded hospitals in the country, according to the daily Trolleywatch figures released by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation.

Australia has had one of its worst flu seasons on record with more than 100,000 reported cases – two-and-ahalf times the usual number – out 24million population.

Dr Fergal Hickey, emergency medicine consultant, told the Irish Daily Mail yesterday that it was inevitable the virus would reach Ireland and that the system here would not be able to cope.

He said: ‘We don’t have enough beds to treat patients at the best of times.’

‘Little progress has been made’