Minister sees overcrowded emergency departments yet empty ward beds

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has told the Dáil he often sees overcrowded emergency departments but empty beds in wards when he makes unannounced visits to hospitals.

He said it should take one hour to discharge a patient and prepare a bed for the next patient but it can sometimes take as long as five hours and this was unacceptable.

Outlining some of the causes for hospital overcrowding, he said admission rates varied widely between hospitals with a patient twice as likely to be admitted to some hospitals: “Less experienced doctors and locums have a lower threshold for admissions than experienced and more senior ones.”

He also said some hospitals sort the average patient within four days but others take twice as long. As he faced sustained criticism over elderly patients being left on trolleys for up to 30 hours, he said there were demographic pressures on hospitals. He said the cases were met “with the familiar cries for more beds, more money and more staff. However, this is already happening. The problem is more complicated with multiple causes and they all need to be addressed.” He said “the growing and ageing population is causing a small but relentless increase in demand year on year”.

Fair Deal waiting time

But he stressed that €117 million in additional funding had been provided this year and they had significantly cut the waiting time for Fair Deal admissions to nursing homes, freeing up 225 hospital beds daily.

"There are over 500 more nurses in place than 12 months ago and more registered doctors than ever, with a further 338 non-consultant hospital doctors and 78 consultants appointed this year." Mr Varadkar was speaking during a Fianna Fáil motion on the crisis in emergency departments. The party's health spokesman, Billy Kelleher, said last month was the worst October on record with 7,971 patients cared for on trolleys. Mr Kelleher said it was "quite incredible" and "almost unethical" that the Minister had directly contacted a patient to ask him about how he was being treated in the health service.

The Cork North-Central TD was referring to the 91-year-old man in Tallaght hospital who spent 29 hours on a trolley. His private member’s motion calls for adequate and available staffing levels for emergency departments and to ensure time on trolleys was less than six hours.

Sinn Féin health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said Beaumont Hospital’s emergency department recently had to go off-call due to overcrowding.

He believed the Government’s efforts had amounted to “little more than a stand-still response, holding things as they have been rather than investing and resourcing the identified needs of our health service”.