Nearly 500 people waited for a bed in hospitals across the country on Monday morning as hospital staff braced for another week of overcrowding.
Figures from the Irish Nursing and Midwives Organization (INMO) trolley clock show that 489 hospital patients were waiting for their bed as of Monday morning. Almost 400 of those patients were waiting in the emergency room while 99 were in other wards in the hospital.
The hardest-hit hospitals include University Hospital Limerick (UHL) with 48 patients waiting, Cork University Hospital with 38 and Letterkenny University Hospital with 37 patients.
More advisers and senior decision-makers were dispatched to hospitals over the weekend to ensure a more even pattern of discharges between Saturday and Sunday.
More than 400 patients were discharged Saturday, compared to 278 the previous Saturday, it said.
However, about 537 patients who were well enough to leave the hospital were delayed.
Senior staff have been asked to participate in work over the weekend to try to address patient safety concerns. The Chief Clinical Officer of the HSE, Dr. Colm Henry said the number of people waiting for hospital beds has eased somewhat since last Tuesday. However, he said the current figure remains “too high”.
“It is clear that from the extraordinary efforts of our staff, who heeded our call to address the patients’ safety issue clearly associated with long stays in our emergency departments, turning up this weekend and working really hard after a difficult Christmas to try to clear those logjams in the hospitals and ensure a better flow of patients into and out of hospital,” he told RTE’s Morning Ireland programme, reports The Mirror.
When asked how many extra beds private hospitals need, Dr. Henry: “We are seeking additional beds in case this surge in viruses, which has not yet peaked, continues to cause impact on our healthcare system. We are looking for as much as we can get. Each individual hospital has been given funding to link with our local private hospitals to maximise the number of beds,” reports The Mirror.
On Monday, UHL launched a pilot to pressure the ER.
As part of the project, doctors and paramedics from Ennis Hospital will screen patients to determine whether or not they need to travel to Limerick Hospital.
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