New flu vaccine campaign aims to ease hospital overcrowding

A new flu vaccination campaign is to be launched by the HSE and additional palliative care beds are to be opened in the west and south-east in an attempt to ease pressure on acute hospitals.

This year’s flu outbreak is worse than last winter’s and the number of cases has yet to peak, according to the head of the Health Service Executive.

The rise in flu activity since the start of the year has contributed to an “extraordinary” 9 per cent increase in hospital attendances at hospital emergency departments, according to HSE director general Tony O’Brien.

New measures to be put in place aimed at tackling the trolley crisis in hospitals also include a continuation of an out-sourcing initiative introduced last year to reduce waiting lists for elective procedures.

The number of people on trolleys in emergency departments and on wards awaiting admission to a hospital bed have been at near record levels over recent days .

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said there were 341 patients on trolleys in emergency departments or on wards on Friday.

The largest number was at St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin where 27 people were on trolleys.

The situation would be much worse but for the measures taken by the HSE’s emergency department taskforce to alleviate overcrowding in hospitals, Tony O’Brien.

“Given the extraordinary increase in demand for emergency services, the fact that position has held as it has is a sign that those measures were necessary and appropriate though obviously not yet sufficient,” Mr O’Brien said.

Asked about plans to use private hospital to take the pressure off public facilities, he said “nothing is off the table” in terms of what would be done to improve the situation but the financial situation was constrained. “If we’re faced with large numbers of patients with influenza needing intensive care and ventilation then we’ll do what we have to do.”

A meeting of the emergency department taskforce implementation group on Friday was told an earlier onset of influenza this year than last year is being attributed to the increased levels of emergency department overcrowding in recnet weeks. This is despite more than €74 million being invested over recent months to tackle the trolley crisis.

The meeting was told, according to informed sources, that hospital admission levels have increased by 9.5 per cent.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) is to launch a new two-week campaign aimed at encouraging people to take the flu vaccine. The message will be that it is not too late to be vaccinated.

New community facilities will be opened, including additional palliative care beds in Waterford and Galway to relieve pressure on acute hospitals in the regions.

Hospitals will also be given permission to provide additional overtime to staff to assist in dealing with the trolley problems.

Government sources have suggested that money for the new initiative will have to come from the HSE’s existing €13 billion budget.

Speaking in Maynooth at a conference on primary care, Mr O’Brien said it wasn’t possible to have a primary care centre within 10 miles of everyone, as in The Netherlands, because Ireland’s population density was lower.

He appealed to the different sectors of the health service to stop “taking lumps out of each other” inn arguments about “our slice of the cake”.

He said he rejected claims that the HSE had an agenda to reduce the power of doctors and nurses to advocate on behalf of their patients. “I applaud when a healthcare professional speaks out and says something is wrong.”