Hospital capacity crisis continues

Limerick Regional Hospital has had to accommodate emergency trolley patients on inpatient rewards to relieve overcrowding in its emergency department.

However, emergency department consultants have welcomed this, as they say this practice is safer for patients than leaving them on trolleys in the ED.

The emergency consultants' organisation has welcomed the move this week by the HSE, which it says will improve patient safety at Limerick Regional Hospital.

The Irish Association of Emergency Medicine (IAEM) says in the face of increasingly unsafe and overcrowded conditions in the hospital's ED, a directive was issued by HSE management that a proportion of the admitted inpatients on trolleys be transferred to inpatient wards.

The IAEM says while this marginally increased the number of inpatients on wards, it greatly reduced the extreme overcrowding in the ED.

The Association stressed that research has shown that the detention of patients in an emergency department beyond the time that the decision to admit the patient has been made results in increased illness and even death.

By contrast, it says the practice of placing a small number of additional patients from the ED on wards has been shown to be safe, according to a recent major study.

The IAEM says once standard measures to reduce ED overcrowding fail, HSE managers should institute this practice of moving ED patients to inpatient wards.

Meanwhile, the Patients Together group has condemned the failure of the Government and the Health Minister to end hospital capacity problems, following a number of recent capacity issues in Limerick, Mullingar and elsewhere.

"We need someone to take control of our country's health system, which is in a shambles," Janette Byrne of Patients Together said.

See also 'Midlands hospital overcrowding crisis'

[Posted: Fri 04/12/2009]