The report into governance and patient safety issues at Tallaght hospital will make “an important contribution” to the extensive programme of change already underway, the Health Service Executive said.
Dr Philip Crowley, national director for quality and patient safety, said the recommendations came at a time of considerable change and reform in the health system.
The HSE noted the report had acknowledged the many improvements that had taken place at Tallaght since the particular circumstances in June last year, when the Hiqa report was carried out.
It said it noted and welcomed that legislative amendments would be necessary to strengthen the accountability of service providers in receipt of State funding.
In relation to the targets in the Hiqa report, it said some 65 per cent of patients in the emergency department were now either discharged or admitted within that timeframe.
The union representing nurses called for the re-opening of 1,300 acute hospital beds in order to eliminate the situation whereby patients are left on trolleys in corridors.
The Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’ Organisation (INMO) said it had campaigned since late 2004 on the issue, and that all closed beds should be opened and fully staffed to deal with the crisis.
“There are currently over 1,300 acute beds closed across the country, including 31 in Tallaght hospital,” it said.
“There are also 1,083 non-acute beds closed. The first four months of this year saw 26,106 patients nationwide spending time on trolleys, awaiting an in-patient bed.”
Industrial relations officer Derek Reilly said that in a number of hospitals, including Tallaght, trolleys were being moved onto already overcrowded wards or on corridors.
Patients had “no privacy, no facilities, no oxygen, no suction and staff have obstructed access at critical times to patients in distress or in cardiac arrest”, he said.
Separately, the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine (IAEM) commended Hiqa for what it said was the “thoroughness” of the investigation.
The body said consultants in emergency medicine had expressed their concerns to the authority about the practice of boarding patients on trolleys in an open corridor beside the emergency department.
“These concerns and the many steps taken by consultants in emergency medicine in their fruitless attempts to have these concerns acted upon by hospital management were revealed at the coroner’s inquests that followed the tragic deaths of two admitted patient who were boarded on a corridor in the emergency department,” the IAEM said.
The body said it was “striking” that when Hiqa issued its new edict to the new hospital chief executive last August, the hospital immediately ceased the practice.
“The inability or unwillingness to solve the problem before this was a result of the systematic failure of previous hospital management.”
It said it had continually highlighted “chronic” overcrowding in emergency departments nationally.
Although the situation at Tallaght had “markedly improved”, overcrowding remained a daily risk to patient safety in other hospitals – a problem “made worse in the past 12 months by further bed closures”.