UHL shortfalls still big risk to patients
REPORT AFTER AOIFE (16) LOST HER LIFE IN A&E
DUTY OF CARE: University Hospital Limerick and (inset) Aoife Johnston
PATIENTS still face “significant risks” at University Hospital Limerick, according to a new report from the health watchdog.
Despite “slight improvements” in compliance levels in the overwhelmed hospital, the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) found that the time it takes patients to be treated and seen falls “significantly short” of national targets.
It said this leaves patients in the hospital’s emergency department at a “higher level of risk of harm for prolonged periods of time”.
The report, which was published yesterday and was based on an inspection from November 21,
2023, comes a week after the inquest into the death of Aoife Johnston (16).
She died in the hospital’s emergency department in December 2022 after waiting 15 hours to receive antibiotics, despite having a letter from her GP that it was suspected she had sepsis.
The report says the hospital is still extremely overcrowded, with HIQA giving UHL the worst-rated score for its person-centred care and support.
It said the hospital is “non-compliant” in giving service users’ dignity, privacy and autonomy and explains non-compliant as “the service has identified one or more findings, which indicate that the relevant national standard has not been met and that this deficiency is such that it represents a significant risk to people using the service.”
The hospital was partially or non-compliant with three of the four relevant national standards assessed by HIQA.
Verdict
At the inquest into Aoife’s death last week, Limerick Coroner, John McNamara returned a verdict of medical misadventure in her death from meningitis after she contracted sepsis.
The inquest heard hospitals are required to treat sepsis patients within 10-15 minutes. However, UHL did not triage Aoife for over an hour.
Aoife had to wait for more than 15 hours in agony to receive antibiotics, which it was heard would likely have saved her.
The antibiotics she needed were readily available, but because UHL was so short-staffed and overcrowded, staff were delayed in giving them to her.
Dr Jim Gray, who was the only ED consultant on call that weekend, told the inquest that not only was the ED a “death trap” on the night, “it is still a death trap”.
David Cullinane, Sinn Féin’s health spokesperson, said following the report the Government needs to fasttrack 288 additional beds for UHL.
He said: “The latest HIQA inspection of University Hospital Limerick has again demonstrated that the hospital is severely constrained by a lack of bed capacity both in the hospital and in the community.”
This comes as the HSE aims to ease overcrowding health services in the Midwest by putting together a support team, comprising Grace Rothwell, national director, Orla Kavanagh, director of nursing and integration at Waterford University Hospital, and retired Emergency Medicine Consultant Dr Fergal Hickey. Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said he was concerned at the pressures on health services in the area.
“We need to provide reassurance to the people... and address the very serious pressures on the services.”