UNIVERSITY Hospital Limerick (UHL) had double the number of admitted patients waiting on trolleys for an in-hospital bed than any other hospital in the country last month.
In fact, one in every five of the 10,577 patients on trolleys countrywide was waiting for a bed in the Limerick hospital.
That’s according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Trolley Watch count for the month of May.
That’s nearly one quarter higher than the recorded numbers last year, when there were 1,857 people waiting for a bed in UHL.
The figures were released just days after Heath Minister Stephen Donnelly said that the arrival of the crack team he sent into Limerick in recent weeks is already producing results.
The new figures show that the numbers of people on trolleys has jumped 1,940 per cent on its figures from when INMO records began in 2006, 355 per cent higher than 10 years ago in 2014, and 1,162 per cent higher than when the government closed the emergency departments in St John’s, Nenagh, and Ennis hospitals in 2009.
Commenting on the figures, INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said that “the situation in the Mid West is of huge concern to our organisation”.
“Despite an expert team being in the hospital for the month of May, there was only six days where there was less than one hundred people on trolleys on the Dooradoyle campus.
“Despite winter being well and truly over, we are continuing to see an unacceptable number of people being treated on trolleys, chairs or in other inappropriate bed spaces in Irish hospitals this month. The fact that we have seen over 1,310 children on trolleys so far this year is a huge cause of concern”.
None of those children were on trolleys in Limerick, but on one day alone last week – Wednesday May 29 – there were more than 140 patients on trolleys in the Limerick emergency department waiting for a bed.
“The HSE have now allowed us to get in a situation where over five hundred people a day on trolleys in May has been completely normalised and does not seem to warrant an emergency response,” the INMO general secretary said.
“It’s time now for the HSE and Department of Health to bring all stakeholders together, whether that be through the Emergency Department Taskforce or another forum, to discuss the clinical implications the recruitment moratorium is having on the ability to provide safe and timely care.
“Overcrowding is not just a problem confined to the Mid West, we are seeing dangerous levels of overcrowding in Cork and Dublin.
“The HSE must not let this problem continue to grow over the summer months. They must take action now and immediately end their recruitment embargo on nursing and midwifery grades.”
UHL was asked for comment.
