Health unit to examine how nine hospitals coped with overcrowding over New Year
The Health Minister Leo Varadkar has announced a review of nine hospital Emergency Departments running a trial of new procedures to ease overcrowding.
The Special Delivery Unit will examine the performance of nine hospitals which were due to implement the proposals over Christmas.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation says the proposals were rejected by members because they did not trust hospital managers to make sure they were implemented.
Minister Varadkar says he is keen to make sure the policies are actually being implemented in every hospital.
He said: "The Special Delivery Unit has now been mandated to carry out an audit of nine hospitals to see how they performed over the New Year period and see if the escalation procedures were implemented.
"It is appreciated that even when a hospital does implement all the procedures that it is supposed to do sometimes, a little bit like the floods, hospitals can be just overwhelmed with demand."
