Trolley crisis is due to bad management, claims Leo
THERE is ‘no connection’ between resources, staffing and overcrowding in hospitals – the principal factor is failings in clinical management, claimed the Taoiseach yesterday.
He made the comments after it emerged 9,000 patients were on trolleys last month – 15% more than October last year.
Health Minister Simon Harris told the Irish Daily Mail yesterday he is awaiting the results of a capacity review to outline how many new beds are needed across the entire system. He said he will use this to determine what measures are to be announced in the forthcoming capital plan.
But while Mr Harris said the Government is starting to ‘turn on the tap’ in terms of funding and resources to help hospitals tackle overcrowding, Leo Varadkar said the fault for overcrowding lies with clinical management in hospitals.
He conceded: ‘October certainly was a bad month in terms of overcrowding in our hospitals’.
However he added: ‘It is important to examine the statistics produced by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation to see the extraordinary variance that arises among hospitals.
‘Overcrowding at Beaumont Hospital is at its second lowest since nurses started counting trolleys. In Blanchardstown, it is the third lowest. In St James’s… it’s the lowest in five years and St Vincent’s… the lowest in four years. In Cavan General Hospital, overcrowding is at its lowest in a long time.’
He then pointed to University Hospital Limerick and St Luke’s General Hospital in Kilkenny which, despite new emergency departments and extra staff, still experience severe overcrowding.
‘If this demonstrates anything, it is that the problem is not simply about resources or staffing because there seems to be no connection whatsoever between staffing and resourcing levels and the level of overcrowding,’ he said.
‘This is principally about clinical leadership, management and other matters. That is what makes it so much harder to deal with.’
University Hospital Limerick said last night it has one of the country’s busiest emergency departments ‘with over 64,000 attendances in 2016’. It ‘acknowledged that far too many patients in the ED wait for too long on trolleys on corridors during busy periods and we very much regret any upset this causes.’
It said ED overcrowding is a ‘whole hospital issue’ and it was ‘explicit and consistent in its message in advance of opening that the new ED would not spell an end to the phenomenon of admitted patients waiting on trolleys. A multi-faceted approach is required in this regard encompassing additional bed capacity, improved patient flow… [and] development of integrated care programmes with community services’.
Mr Varadkar said if ending overcrowding was ‘as simple as writing a cheque, we would have solved this problem a long time ago.’
Outlining his plans to tackle the crisis, Mr Harris said: ‘We have just started turning on the tap in terms of additional funding. It means more practical things like 45 more home care packages each week, opening more transitional beds, opening more beds in hospitals around the country.’
Comment – Page 12 jennifer.bray@dailymail.ie