Lengthy waits in A&Es are ‘putting the fear of God into elderly’
THE leader of the country’s A&E consultants said we are ‘putting the fear of God’ into the elderly about going into hospital as new figures reveal more than 500 patients over the age of 75 have been left on a trolley in emergency departments for more than 24 hours since December 1.
That equates to around 24 preventable deaths in that period, according to the findings of an extensive study published last year.
The figures come despite the HSE’s pledge last summer that over-75s would not spend more than 24 hours waiting for a bed by the end of the year. Irish
‘A terrible indictment on our society’
Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM) president Conor Deasy said conditions are ‘very challenging’, as one hospital – University Hospital Limerick – had a record 132 people on trolleys on Monday.
Professor Deasy, who is clinical director and professor of emergency medicine at Cork University Hospital, told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘We are seeing a very big uplift of 30% in attendances [nationally] this year to date compared to this time last year.’
He said there had been a 25% increase nationally for people aged over 75.
Professor Deasy added: ‘The thing about that population is they’re more complex, they’re more frail, they’ve got greater medical needs and a greater medical risk when they’re left in the emergency department overnight.’
Referring to the findings of a French study published in leading medical journal JAMA last November and highlighted by the IAEM, he said: ‘We know that for every 21 patients that spend a night in the emergency department whose age is over 75, that we have an excess mortality rate of one extra death.’
That amounts to almost 24 deaths from the 502 over 75s who spent longer than 24 hours on a trolley between December 1 and Friday.
While there have been ‘efforts to improve things’ and get to a situation where no one over the age of 75 spends more than six hours in A&E, Professor Deasy said the plan ‘needs investment in bed capacity and it needs investment in staff’.
He added that the HSE’s recruitment freeze, announced last November, ‘is killing our ability to deliver on the quality improvement projects that were identified as a priority’.
The IAEM said the embargo should be lifted immediately.
Professor Deasy added: ‘Then we need a realistic investment in infrastructure. We do not have enough beds in the acute hospital sector. We do not have enough intensive care beds. We do not have enough rehabilitation beds and we do not have enough community beds.
‘And what we’re seeing then as a consequence is chaotic emergency departments that are putting the fear of God into people when they get sick, such that they won’t attend.
‘And that in and of itself is a terrible indictment on our society and on our regime – that people are afraid to attend emergency departments because they’re hearing horror stories of long waits to be seen and of chaos and of being stuck on a trolley. That is not good.’
HSE figures show that, across the last four weeks an average of 25,738 attended emergency departments each week and an average of 7,463 of those were admitted to hospital. These patients waited an average of 12.45 hours to be admitted.
A HSE spokeswoman told the MoS: ‘While we have seen increased attendances of close to 15%, we’ve seen some improvements in the number of patients delayed in hospitals, the average trolleys every week, and also the statistics for older people where we put a particular focus on to ensure that those patients over 75 were all seen within 24 hours.’