CANCELLATIONS of elective treatments and surgeries have continued at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) across this week, despite a massive fall in the numbers of patients waiting for a bed in the emergency department.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said earlier this week that he hopes the hospital will be able to gradually resume services from next week.
Speaking in a radio interview on Newstalk on Tuesday, the Minister stressed that the deferral of less urgent care and appointments was a planned “reset” as recommended by the expert team sent to the hospital recently.
However HSE CEO Bernard Gloster has warned that it could be ‘weeks’ before full services are restored at UHL and the other four hospitals run by UL Hospitals Group.
The hospital introduced cancellations in the middle of last week after demand for in-hospital beds became hugely overheated, with 127 admitted patients waiting on trolleys, in corridors, and in overflow wards for a bed last Wednesday (August 7) alone.
The hospital group announced last week that scheduled surgeries and many appointments are on hold across hospitals in Ennis and Nenagh as well as St John’s and UHL in Limerick and the Croom Orthopaedic Hospital, with only time-sensitive appointments, such as cancer treatment and dialysis going ahead.
By Monday of this week, trolley figures at UHL had been reduced to 56 – the lowest number since December 22, 2023, when there were 32 admitted patients waiting for a bed according to the figures published by the Irish Nurses and Midwives organisation.
However, a hospital spokesperson this week echoed the prediction of the HSE boss, telling the Limerick Post that it will be some time before postponements are lifted, and that it is very unlikely to happen this week.
Mr Gloster said he was “shocked and horrified” at the high numbers of patients he saw waiting for urgent care in UHL last week.
He said this decision to cancel scheduled treatment and appointments was taken on the advice of a three-person specialist team which has been working with UHL.
“They provided insight and part of that insight was that at a particular point in the summer it would be important to consider an intervention for a period of time that would allow the hospital to de-escalate,” he said.
He said this “means the hospital is completely overheated” and there is a backlog of care.
Mr Gloster however defended the hospital’s record on elective care, saying waiting lists for elective or scheduled care had dropped sharply last year.
Speaking to RTÉ’s News at One, Mr Gloster was unable to give a definitive date for when these restrictions will be lifted.
“I would like to think it will be in the category of weeks,” he admitted.
A ULHG spokesperson said there were a number of exceptions to the postponements in scheduled care, including: time-critical surgery; cancer services; dialysis; cardiology services; the rapid access medical unit; dermatology, rheumatology, and infectious diseases outpatient clinics; bronchoscopy rapid access; treatment of CF outpatients; outpatient therapy; the fracture clinic; paediatric surgery and outpatient clinics; the vascular laboratory; and ambulatory trauma.
Adding his concern this week, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said that the ongoing overcrowding crisis at UHL must be resolved by winter.
The Health Minister admitted that reform at UHL has been slow to start “partly because they’ve been under so much pressure for so long that it is simply more difficult to do reform when you’re firefighting all the time”.
He claimed that “there is a management issue, there is a clinical leadership issue, there is a capacity issue.”
