Drumm says 90% satisfied with hospitals

The head of the Health Service Executive (HSE) has denied that the Irish medical system is in crisis.

In a speech to the National Healthcare Summit today, Prof Brendan Drumm said although there are cases where expected standards are not met, the overall public experience of the health service is excellent.

Accident and Emergency department (A&E) Beaumont Hospital.

He cited a soon-to-be-published study that found satisfaction rates with the treatment received in Irish hospitals are at 90 per cent or above.

"While it is accepted that there are individual cases where our services fail to provide care up to the standard we would want, to use such cases to represent the whole health service is unfair to patients, staff and the community as a whole," he said.

Prof Drumm also insisted that a recently published Bed Usage Review by the HSE revealed that an increase in the number of hospital beds will not make the health service more efficient or improve facilities for patients.

"The findings show that the way to improve access to our acute beds is not to provide more acute beds at enormous expense to the taxpayer but to tackle inefficient hospital processes and develop our community-based facilities," he argued.

A major contributory factor to the shortage of acute beds is the high level of inappropriate admissions to hospitals and hospital stays, he added.

According to the Bed Usage Review, at least 13 per cent of patients admitted to hospital were there unnecessarily. That figure rose to 34 per cent in some hospitals.

Four in ten patients in acute beds could have been treated in an alternative and more appropriate setting; in a fifth of hospitals, half their patients could have received treatment outside of the hospital.

The review also found three-quarters of all elective surgery patients were admitted earlier than they should have been.

Prof Drumm said the solution to the bed shortage was to improve access to community-based services, non-acute beds and home-care packages.