An 81-year-old woman who was told at 5.30 a.m. she would get the next available bed at St James's Hospital was still waiting eight hours later, with 16 people before her in the queue.
At that point the family gave up and brought her to Blackrock Clinic.
The story is typical of what increasingly is becoming a nightmare for patients and their families.
The wait to see a doctor is bad enough. This woman arrived at the hospital by ambulance at 10.15 p.m. after a GP had diagnosed her as having hypertension and pneumonia. It was 4.45 a.m. before she saw a doctor.
The longest waits begin after a decision is made to admit the patient.
This woman, who is in the VHI, was told a bed had been found for her in the private hospital and that she would be brought there after being X-rayed.
Her son, who had accompanied her, went home, satisfied that all would be well.
"Imagine my anger and dismay to be told at 11 a.m. that she was still on that trolley and now there were 16 people ahead of her for a bed," he said later. She had had nothing to eat, although she had been in hospital for about 13 hours.
At 2.30 p.m. the family took her to Blackrock Clinic.
"I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not in any way criticising ambulance men, nurses or doctors who dealt with my mother last night for the professional and caring way in which they treated her," her son said in an open letter to the Minister for Health the next day.
"The problem lies with those administering a health service that requires ill people to undergo further unnecessary stress trying to avail of a prompt medical service to which they are absolutely entitled. This must be changed immediately," he said.
St James's said that while it could not comment on an individual case it would regret any distress caused and would regard it as very unsatisfactory for a person to have to wait that long for a bed.
It said the Wednesday night in question was very busy. If a misunderstanding occurred with a patient, and if the hospital had contributed to the misunderstanding, it would apologise to the family.
The hospital is looking forward to a new development in which it will deal with major and minor casualty complaints in separate facilities and will have beds that can be occupied by people awaiting admission. It says this should improve the situation for everybody.
The hospital could not say when the new facilities would be ready. It is understood they are likely to take at least 18 months to be in place.
About half the 55,000 people who attended the casualty department at Limerick Regional Hospital last year had relatively minor injuries which could have been treated elsewhere, a study at the hospital has found.
Public hospitals in Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow have 4,851 beds, of which 900 are designated as private or semi-private, the Minister for Health and Children recently told Mr Ivor Callely TD. Tallaght has 120, Beaumont 108 and St James's 107. At the other end of the scale, Naas has only seven beds designated private or semi-private.
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