Row over ‘hospital trolley cut for Leo’
Patient, TD and INMO ‘bemused’ by the dip
A ROW has broken out over claims of a substantial dip in trolley figures at Galway University Hospital in the run-up to a visit by the Taoiseach.
While 42 patients were on trolleys on Tuesday and 58 on Wednesday, that dropped to just 26 on Thursday when Leo Varadkar visited to open a new 75-bed ward.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation is ‘bemused’ by the drop, while patient Pádraig MacDonncha told how he was surprised at how quickly he was called through to be examined.
The 60-year-old from Carraroe, who first spoke about his experience on Raidió na Gaeltachta, said: ‘I said to myself “This is good service today”. I didn’t cop on at the time that Leo was coming, I was in pain.’ But he said that after being moved to a short-term ward he realised the hospital was busier than he had first thought.
He said: ‘I was moved to the short-term ward at the back of the hospital. When I went down there I noticed straight away, because I had been there a few times before, that it was overcrowded. There were 50, maybe 60 there. They only left about 15 or 20 beds in casualty’, with ‘everything looking rosy for Leo’.
Saolta Hospital Group said the hospital had a surge in Emergency Department patients from that Monday and any actions were part of its ‘full capacity protocol’, which saw patients moved elsewhere in the hospital.
‘On Monday, six escalation beds were opened on St Patrick’s Ward and a further six overflow beds on Tuesday in the Acute Medical Assessment area,’
A hospital spokesperson said: ‘Additional trolleys were placed on wards as we would always do, bringing this to a total of 19 trolleys in addition, this included using beds on St Finbar’s ward, elective beds to accommodate two trauma orthopaedic patients from the ED for Tuesday night only.’
While 58 patients were awaiting Emergency Department admission on Wednesday morning, the surge eased by that evening, and on Thursday 18 patients were awaiting admission in the Emergency Department with seven on ward trolleys, they said. INMO spokeswoman Anne Buckley said she was ‘bemused’ by the reduction.
She said beds were freed for incoming patients on two wards and the Medical Assessment unit was opened past its usual hours all week.
‘All in all, great efforts were made to get patients off trolleys,’ she said. ‘It’s a pity it isn’t like this all the time.’
The Taoiseach’s office said it was a matter for the HSE and he ‘would know nothing about it’.
Local independent TD, Catherine Connolly was in the hospital at the time of the Taoiseach’s visit, to see a friend.
‘Normally the public area is packed, it wasn’t packed,’ she said. ‘I noticed that there were actually hospital beds empty up against the wall that I’d never seen before in the public area of the accident and emergency.’
The Galway Dáil deputy said she was surprised at how quiet it was, and after consulting trolley figures, she added: that the reduction in numbers ‘seemed a bit of a miracle’.
‘Everything looks rosy for Leo’