HSE: 12,000 patients on trolleys next month
Health chiefs are already predicting there will be more than 12,000 sick people languishing on hospital trolleys for want of a bed next month.
The final draft of the HSE’s winter plan predicts that the trolley count in January 2019 will be 12,378, an increase of 876 (7.60%) on January 2018, when there were 11,502.
The National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP) welcomed the forward planning by the Department of Health and HSE to try to react to a problem in advance of it happening.
However, NAGP chief executive Chris Goodey was not optimistic that a post-Christmas crisis could be avoided.
“The HSE’s National Service Plan published last week showed us that nothing is being done differently — there’s no reform,” he said.
“Despite the fact that we are the fifth highest country in the world in terms of expenditure on health we are just all over the place. To me, it is pure incompetence.”
Under the winter plan, there will be increased diagnostic access for GPs in a bid to reduce the number of patients presenting to emergency departments (EDs).
There has also been a curtailment of scheduled diagnostics to create capacity for urgent or emergency diagnostics, again to relieve pressure on EDs.
However, Mr Goodey said the acceptance that more than 12,000 people would be on trolleys next month was not good enough.
“We need to do more to tackle the fundamental problems of the health service instead of trying to patch things up and try to get to the next election,” he said.
Health Minister Simon Harris will meet key officials in the Department of Health and the HSE on Friday and next Monday.
Mr Harris has said he wants to make sure that everything that possibly can be done is done to cope with a “really busy time” in January. The minister has also urged people to help ease the pressure on EDs by using other services.
Cork University Hospital (CUH) and University Hospital Waterford are among a number of hospitals to establish winter clinics for 175 patients with chronic diseases.
University Hospital Limerick will open a short-stay unit of 12 beds with the ability to increase to a maximum of 17 when required to cope with extra demand up to January 13. The hospital will also run three additional emergency theatres per week over four weeks.
CUH will purchase extra bed capacity over a four- week period and operate a surge and discharge/transit lounge for two weeks from Saturday.
