Cork University Hospital starts transfer of patients

Cork University Hospital on Sunday began transferring up to 20 patients from general wards to other hospitals in a bid to reduce overcrowding and free up beds for new patients to be admitted from the emergency department.

CUH chief executive Tony McNamara confirmed the hospital had begun transferring about 17 non-complex patients to other hospitals, with 10 going to the Mater Private in Mahon, five to the South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital and two to Clonakilty Community Hospital.

“The patients are all non-complex patients and mainly public patients – we have bought some private beds in the Mater Private for as long as the patients need them and there was also some capacity in the South Infirmary Victoria and Clonakilty Community Hospital which we are availing of.”

The transfer operation has been planned for a number of days and Mr McNamara paid tribute to both CUH staff and National Ambulance Service staff for their assistance in ensuring the operation went off smoothly on Sunday.

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“We are very grateful to the ambulance service which put on extra crews which was hugely helpful and to our staff who were on today who worked really hard to enable the transfer to take place – without them this would not be possible and that often gets lost,” he said.

Trolley numbers

He explained that the purpose of the transfer is to free up capacity within hospital wards so that more patients can be admitted from the hospital’s emergency department which has experienced overcrowding over the past week as the number of patients on trolleys hit record levels nationally.

According to the Irish Nurses' and Midwives' Organisation (INMO), CUH recorded the second-highest number of patients on trolleys or waiting on wards for beds in the State in 2017, with 6,815 patients left on trolleys waiting for beds. Only University Hospital Limerick had higher numbers with over 8,000 patients on trolleys.

But Mr McNamara disputed the INMO figures for CUH last week and previously wrote on a blog that “many patients are appropriately on trolleys in assessment units in our hospitals awaiting a decision as to whether they require admission or not”.

Mr McNamara explained that congestion and overcrowding in CUH’s emergency department arises when the hospital is not able to discharge as many patients as it would hope to discharge to ensure a rapid movement of patients through the hospital system.

Length of stay

Mr McNamara said the hospital has about 900 beds in total, including 500 for adult patients, 150 for maternity patients, 75 for children and 50 for mental health patients and that, although the hospital had the shortest average length of stay at 5.8 days, longer stays can lead to hospital overcrowding.

“We usually have about 200 people a day presenting at the emergency department – about two-thirds are discharged without admission but one-third are admitted which means we need around 75 discharges a day from the hospital wards to keep up with the number of people coming in.”

According to a CUH spokesman, there is nothing particularly unusual about the decision to transfer non-complex cases from CUH to other hospitals in the Cork area and similar transfers had begun to take place in other hospitals nationally during the week.