Ambulances are being held up for hours at the accident and emergency units of Dublin hospitals on a regular basis while crews wait for hospital staff to attend to the patients they have just brought in.
Yesterday three of Dublin Fire Brigade's 11 ambulances were delayed for up to four hours at Beaumont Hospital when the hospital's A&E unit became grossly overcrowded.
The situation was described as "very serious" by a fire brigade spokesman who said the ambulance crews could not leave until they got back the trolleys on which they had ferried patients to the hospital. They also had to wait until staff became free so they could formally hand over newly arrived patients to them.
"Our men are instructed not to abandon patients until they are handed over to the medical staff. But staff are overburdened with work, which means this takes time. Our stretchers are also used in the hospital until they can find a trolley to remove the patient from ours to theirs," the fire brigade spokesman said.
"If our ambulances are tied up we pass calls to the health board. If it was very busy on a Saturday night you would have to put a call on the long finger if the health board's ambulance fleet couldn't cope. It hasn't happened in the last month or so, but there was a period when things were very hairy," he added.
A SIPTU official, Mr Paul Bell, who represents health board ambulance-drivers in the eastern region, said his drivers were also regularly held up in A&E units, leaving their ambulances grounded. "It's a major concern," he said.
He added that one driver had to go through the stress of a disciplinary inquiry after a complaint was made that he failed to respond to a call, when in fact he was tied up in A&E. He was placed on leave with pay during the inquiry, which ultimately exonerated him.
This problem for ambulances, which has apparently been ongoing for some time, was highlighted yesterday when 37 patients were on trolleys in Beaumont's A&E department.
The hospital has been under severe pressure in the past week and, as well as cancelling a number of elective admissions, it reopened 16 of the 45 beds it closed earlier in the year. The shortfall in beds has meant the A&E unit gets clogged as there is nowhere to move patients to. In addition the hospital, like many others in Dublin, has more than 60 beds "blocked" by patients who are fit for discharge but have nowhere to go.
However, the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) said yesterday it had been provided with €3.8 million in the past two weeks by the Department of Health to arrange alternative care packages - at home or in nursing homes - for up to 100 such patients in its region. The funding had been announced previously by the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, in July.
The ERHA said 10 of Beaumont's patients had been approved for discharge under the scheme and were likely to leave the hospital within days.