Health crisis: Trolley numbers remain 20% up on last year

The number of patients on trolleys in hospital on Tuesday remained more than 20 per cent higher than on the same day in 2015.

Patients waiting on trolleys more than nine hours is up by a similar margin compared to a year ago, figures from the HSE show.

The trend is likely to cause concern within the health sector, given the massive input of resources and effort made to combat overcrowding in recent months.

There were 537 patients waiting for admission in hospital emergency departments and in wards on Tuesday, according to the daily TrolleyWatch count by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO). This is up over 100 on the previous day and compares to a record number of 601 trolleys recorded in January 2015.

Worrying trend

Faced with a surge in trolley numbers last week, Minister for Health Leo Varadkar said they were 10 per cent lower than a year ago. However, this is no longer the case.

It is not yet clear whether the latest figures represent a worrying new trend or whether they have been influenced by the threatened strike by emergency department nurses, which was due to take place on Thursday but has been called off.

The HSE’s own figures, which often differ from the count carried out by the INMO, recorded 455 people on trolleys at 8am on Tuesday, compared to 382 on the same day last year. There were 201 patients waiting on trolleys over nine hours, compared to 161 a year ago.

The INMO has published an analysis of trolley figures for 2015, which show the level of overcrowding increased 21 per cent compared to the previous year. In December 2015, overcrowding was 13 per cent down on the same month a year earlier.