Easing A&E crisis may cost lives, medics insist
A DOCTOR fears his patients will suffer due to moves to ease A&E overcrowding by cancelling operations.
Jerry Cowley said cancellation of planned surgery by hospitals to free up beds could put his patients’ lives in danger.
Yesterday the number of patients on trolleys across the country dropped from a high of 601 this week to 371 as many hospitals cancel elective surgery.
Dr Cowley, who is based in Mulranny, Co. Mayo, said: ‘ All of my patients who have waited for ages for these operations like a hernia operation are going to come back to me again and ask me what is happening.
‘They are going to wake me in the middle of the night with a strangulated hernia, for example.
‘Their life is going to be in danger. I am going to be looking for an ambulance. They are going to have to go into A&E. It’s going to be a terrible emergency and they may die, God forbid.’
He t old RTÉ Radio’s Sean O’Rourke Show the problem of A&E overcrowding ‘should have been sorted out long ago’.
Charles Normand, Trinity College professor of health policy and management, said patient waiting lists will worsen as a result.
He said: ‘Elective care has already been significantly affected by the unavailability of beds and previous cancellations, so further disruption will make this problem even worse.
‘While some hospitals have coped quite well with the ED [emergency department] problem, I expect that waiting times and waiting lists are all going to get worse.’
Latest figures show the waiting list for operations such as knee replacements was heading towards 60,000 patients in October. Waiting lists for non-urgent ear, nose and throat surgery for in-patients or day- cases increased to 59,463.
The number of A&E patients on trolleys has risen as about 700 patients on wards are forced to stay as there is not enough places like nursing home beds for them.
A €25million fund is being used to try to get patients care in nursing homes or supports like home helps so they can return home.
The HSE admitted the cancellation of planned surgeries like hip operations was one option hospitals can introduce to free up beds to ease A&E overcrowding. The number of cancelled operations has not been confirmed by the HSE.
The HSE said: ‘All hospitals have invoked escalation plans which includes opening additional overflow areas, curtailing non-emergency surgery, providing additional diag- nostics and strengthening discharge planning.
‘Hospitals are taking these steps as required so patients who need to be admitted to hospital are admitted to a bed as soon as possible.’
But Finian McGrath, Independent TD, said cancelling procedures for patients was the wrong response.
He said: ‘What it is doing is pushing the problem into another area. It is making patients suffer another type of wait to deal with the problem and it’s not acceptable.
‘While they are waiting they get sicker and sicker and may very well end up in A&E to get treatment. It’s a vicious circle.’
Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital has cancelled 24 operations such as ear implant surgery, orthopaedic operations and plastic surgery.
The hospital had the highest number of patients on trolleys and chairs in its A&E yesterday morning. Nurses plan a lunchtime protest outside the hospital today.
Naas, the Midlands Regional Hospital in Portlaoise and Tullamore are reviewing whether they need to cancel surgery on a daily basis ‘to facilitate bed capacity’.
Elective surgery in the regional orthopaedic unit at Our Lady’s Hospital Navan is being cancelled to ease A&E crisis in Navan and Our Lady of Lourdes, Drogheda.
Leo Varadkar called for all ‘hands on deck’ to ease A&E overcrowding, which he predicted may get worse next week. He wants two extra beds in wards to ease A&E pressures.
INMO general secretary Liam Doran said such measures were already in place in some hospitals, saying: ‘It has no effect on... overcrowding as it only pushes the problem up the house and doesn’t deal with the fundamentals, which is a lack of bed capacity and an absence of community supports.’
Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin said the Health Minister had to act with a ‘far greater degree of urgency than he has to date to deal with this issue’.