Trolley numbers ‘elder abuse’

MORE elderly people were left waiting over 24 hours in Irish A&E departments in the first three months of this year than in the whole of 2017, according to recent figures.

Almost 15,000 pensioners were forced to wait for more than 24 hours for treatment between January and March of this year. Fianna Fáil spokesperson on older people Mary Butler described the figures as ‘shocking and disgraceful’ and ‘a form of elder abuse’.

‘It can only be seen as a breach of basic human rights and dignity,’ she said. ‘My understanding is that any wait longer than six hours can have an adverse impact, so it is likely that one wait of 24 hours-plus could well produce another one for the same patient in due course,’ she said.

When releasing the figures, a spokeswoman for the Health Service Executive (HSE) confirmed in a letter to Ms Butler that there had been ‘breaches in the Patient Experience Time for patients aged 75 years and over’.

In the HSE annual plan for 2017, it said that it aimed to discharge or admit all patients over the age of 75 from A&E within 24 hours of their arrival.

The highest instances of delay were reported in the Mater hospital in Dublin, where 1,405 pensioners waited more than 24 hours in A&E in the opening months of 2018. The figure in the first three months of the year alone represented a significant increase on last year’. In early 2018, there were 3,496 more elderly patients waiting for more than 24 hours than in the whole of last year when 11,261 older people were left waiting for the prolonged period.

The HSE said it was committed to improving conditions in A&E for older patients and to providing ‘fair, equitable and timely access to quality, safe health services to all patients attending ED [emergency department]’.

They also said that the 2018 National Service Plan would target the issue as well as offering better care options and medical access for older people.