Up to 350 people will die due to overcrowding, warns consultant

Somewhere between 300 and 350 people will die between now and this time next year due to overcrowding in our emergency departments, an emergency medicine consultant has said.

Dr Fergal Hickey, an emergency medicine consultant at Sligo General Hospital and spokesman for the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine, said: "This is something that we have been talking about for over a decade. It is depressing that we are in the same situation that we were in last January and the previous January."

"In spite of clearly identified things that are needed to help, the problem hasn't been addressed. That's because it isn't a political or management priority for the Department of Health and the HSE."

Worrying

“It’s very worrying from a patient safety perspective. If you have an overcrowded emergency department, your chances of dying increase and that is a proven fact.

“There are well-constructed studies from America which show that 30- and seven-day mortality increases as a result of emergency department overcrowding, and if you apply the population metrics to the Irish population, some 300-350 Irish patients a year are dying unnecessarily as a result of emergency department overcrowding.”

Dr Hickey said Minister for Health Leo Varadkar was not entirely to blame for the current crisis in our emergency department, but the blame rested with successive governments.

“Its more than Leo Varadkar, this goes right to the top. The reality is, this first happened in October 1997 when the first patient spent a night in the emergency department in Meath hospital, which has since closed.”

Dr Hickey said “aggressive intervention” was required and he expected that the problem would continue to get worse in the weeks ahead.

“This coming Monday we will have a changeover of junior doctors which will cause a degree of slowing down of various processes in hospitals. The normal speed of processing will slow down which will not help the situation in emergency departments.”

Dr Hickey said any potential case of Ebola would prove catastrophic, given the current state of our emergency departments.