Hospitals across the State are facing staff shortages from next week because of a shortage of over 150 junior doctors available to take up posts.
As of yesterday, there was a shortfall of 158 junior doctors to fill posts due to fall vacant under the next training rotation next Monday, HSE officials told a Dáil committee today.
The failure to recruit adequate numbers of junior doctors, in spite of a major recruitment drive overseas, will lead to shortages in a number of emergency departments, particularly in small hospitals, according to HSE chief executive Cathal Magee.
He told the Public Accounts Committee that hospital managers were working with senior doctors to devise contingency arrangements and to ensure the impact on patient services was minimised.
Patients attempting to access hospital emergency departments continue to endure long waiting times, from an average of 8 hours last January to 6.1 hours in April, HSE figures show. At the end of April, almost 1,400 people were lying on trolleys in the emergency departments of 33 hospitals.
The number of patients waiting for 12 hours or more grew from 44 per day in 2010 to 63 in the first half of this year.
Two-thirds of patients are seen within six hours but the figures for some hospitals are much lower than the average - under 20 per cent in Our Lady of Lourdes hospital in Drogheda and 40 per cent in Tallaght hospital.
Mr Magee said he accepted that patients waiting on trolleys for long periods of time was not acceptable.
Other officials admitted there had been no significant improvement in emergency department waiting times since the Comptroller and Auditor General reported on hospital performance in 2009 but said that "dramatic improvements" would be achieved later this year.
This would be achieved through the recruitment of additional specialists in emergency and acute medicine, the creation of medical assessment units and greater involvement of GPs in screening patients before they arrive in hospital, according to the HSE's Prof Gary Courtney.
At present, Mr Magee said, 70 per cent of patients arriving at the emergency departments of Dublin hospitals were self-referred.
The HSE has identified 10 hospitals where significant risk issues exist, the committee was told. These include hospitals in Navan, Portlaoise, Loughlinstown, Mallow, Bantry, Ennis, Nenagh, Roscommon, as well as St John's Hospital in Limerick and Louth County Hospital.
Changes would be made to ensure high-risk patients by-passed these hospitals where sufficient senior doctors were not in place.