Hospital overcrowding: Harris did not sign off on A&E plan

Minister for Health Simon Harris has asked the HSE to rework parts of a plan for dealing with emergency department overcrowding this winter as he feels it is not specific enough.

Mr Harris is understood to have declined to sign off on a draft of the plan, which sets out how a €40 million Government investment to deal with issues in emergency departments in the winter months will be spent.

Sources said the Minister believed that the HSE winter initiative plan “needed further specificity” in some areas. The document is still being worked on and is likely to be published later in the week.

Mr Harris today met the emergency department task force which comprises senior HSE and Department of Health officials and health service trade union representatives.

Speaking on his way into the meeting, Mr Harris said his priority was to ensure the €40 million he had secured from the Government for the “winter initiative” this year was spent “really effectively”.

“What we absolutely need to ensure is that any measure agreed in here [at the emergency department task force meeting] is delivered in the hospitals,” he said.

Taxpayers’ money

“What we do not need to see is what happened in previous years where commitments were given but not delivered. What I need to be convinced of is that everything the HSE signs up to be delivered can actually be delivered. This is €40 million of taxpayers’ money and is much needed by the hospitals and health service.”

It is understood that the new plan will see the additional resources concentrated in about nine hospitals where overcrowding has been a problem in recent times.

Sources said the plan would not only be about the provision of additional hospital beds but also greater access to home care packages and community supports to allow people who have finished the acute phase of their treatment to go back home, where appropriate.

Figures published by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) today showed a significant reduction in overcrowding last month in Dublin hospitals.

Compared to August 2015, emergency department overcrowding fell 41 per cent in Dublin last month. However, outside Dublin overcrowding increased by 14 per cent.

Crisis existed

Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher said a crisis existed in emergency departments across the country and further investment was needed in the health service.

Mr Kelleher told RTÉ’s News at One that overall trends were still very worrying and the number of patients on trolleys in major hospitals across the regions had substantially increased.

He said the National Treatment Purchase Fund needed to be used in a much more imaginative way. He also said the issue of delayed discharges needs to be addressed. There were still over 600 delayed discharge patients - those in a bed whose acute treatment had concluded - in hospitals, he added.