Minister of Health Stephen Donnelly stated that it will take weeks for University Hospital Limerick and hospitals around the Midwest to fully resume scheduled services, reports RTE.
It comes after UHL, Ennis, Nenagh, St. John’s, and Croom Orthopaedic Hospital postponed inpatient, day surgery, outpatient, and several other scheduled treatments last week, with no additional notice.
“There will be a phased recommencement of those services. I expect that phasing to begin in about a week and I expect a full re-phasing to take a short number of weeks,” Mr Donnelly said, reports RTE.
Mr. Donnelly stated during an appearance on RTÉ’s News at One that the deferrals are a “planned patient safety measure” meant to allow for the adoption of new procedures.
He continued by saying that it was the advice of a panel of experts entrusted with reviewing UHL’s emergency department and patient flow following Aoife Johnston’s death there.
The 16-year-old presented with probable sepsis two days prior, but had to wait a long time for treatment before succumbing of meningitis on December 19, 2022.
“We sent in an expert group earlier on this year to look not just at the ED in UHL but to look at the full patient flow through the hospital. It’s a pretty stark report. It acknowledges that there’s capacity issues – we fully accept that – which is why we’re putting in so much capacity,” the minister said, reports RTE.
“But the report is very clear that there are standard approaches to patient flow in hospitals that we know work well in other hospitals that we are yet to see fully implemented in UHL,” reports RTE.
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