THE HEALTH Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) has been urged to investigate overcrowding at the emergency department of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, after it had the highest number of patients on trolleys in the State for two days running this past week.
Some 48 patients were on trolleys and chairs in the hospital’s emergency department on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation’s Trolleywatch, making it the most overcrowded emergency department in the state.
Overcrowding at the hospital has worsened considerably in 2011. According to the nurses’ union there were 3,266 patients on trolleys or chairs in the hospital’s emergency department in the first six-month period of 2011 compared to 1,664 in the first six months of 2010.
Sinn Féin deputies Peadar Tóibín and Gerry Adams along with local GP Dr Ruairí Hanley have written to Hiqa calling for a full public investigation of the hospital’s emergency department to begin immediately.
The letter said the numbers of patients on trolleys at Drogheda has “consistently exceeded 30” for the past month.
“This has resulted in enormous pressure on the emergency department and represents a clear threat to patient safety and welfare,” it said.
Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday, Dr Hanley said the proposed closure of the emergency department at Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan in the next few months would increase pressure on Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.
He said staff at the hospital were “doing heroic work in dreadful circumstances”.
“The fault here rests with HSE administration and a lack of resources, specifically beds,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the HSE said overcrowding and waiting times in emergency departments were “a source of concern”. The hospital was implementing a two-pronged approach to manage the “chronic overcrowding”. It was now managing scheduled and unscheduled care under the direction of Dr Martin Connor, head of the Special Delivery Unit, which was established to tackle hospital waiting times by Minister for Health James Reilly.
There were also plans to extend the opening hours of the hospital’s acute medical assessment unit before the end of the year, the HSE spokeswoman said. This would go some way to alleviating the high numbers of patients waiting for admission in the emergency department, but would require the provision of additional staff or their redeployment, she said, and “associated service curtailment”.
The spokeswoman also said no decision had yet been taken on the reconfiguration of emergency services at Navan hospital.
