*Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll McNeill (FG) on her visit to UHL. Photograph: Don Moloney
NO COMMITMENTS will be made by the Minister for Health on the provision and location of a second emergency department in the Mid-West until a HIQA review is completed in May.
Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll McNeill (FG) visited the University Hospital Limerick (UHL) on Thursday where she visited a 96 bed-block which is nearing completion and is due to open in September.
UHL has the worst record for overcrowding in the country with renewed calls for the addition of a second emergency department in the region.
Carroll McNeill’s predecessor Stephen Donnelly (FF) last year tasked HIQA with considering this case , in the context of the population changes in recent years and the pressures on UHL.
An interim report from HIQA was published last week but the final report is required before any commitment will be given, the Minister said. “The first thing is that I published everything that I got. The second thing is that it’s an interim report done by HIQA which is really an update on the processes that are going about, we always expected a final report in May and I still expect a final report in May”.
When asked what different findings will be provided in the space of two months considering HIQA have been preparing the report since last May, the Minister commented, “I’m not going to criticise HIQA which is an independent body with its own processes. I’m simply asking them to do their job and report to me in May and I look forward to receiving their report in May”.
She added, “At the end of the day HIQA are engaged in a process about assessing capacity in the region and not whether or not there should be a second emergency department that is an independent committee. I am a new Minister for Health and I respect the fact that they are going through a body of work which I respect. We published an interim report yesterday which goes through that work and I expect their full report in May. I have spoken to public representatives from around the area about the importance of that report. I am looking forward to receiving it and I will be guided by the work that is in that but my concern for the Mid-West is about growing capacity generally, it is not just about an ED, it’s about the whole system, making sure that the community supports are there making sure that the bed capacity is there in hospitals, making sure that we for example have a surgical hub next year that we can get the funding this year to build an elective hospital to get surgical operations that are predictable that are not interrupted by emergencies in acute hospitals”.
No decisions will be made until this process is concluded, she emphasised. “I really do respect the HIQA process and that is not to say that I don’t have strong opinions about broadening the capacity here I just don’t want to be determinative about anything to enable them to do their independent process, I’m looking at infrastructure nationwide we’re making a very strong case in the national development plan review to get serious money to build four elective hospitals, a new national maternity hospital and support a capital plan that really looks at a broad expansion of infrastructure so I am absolutely preparing for that and I see my the HIQA report in my timeline and that the infrastructure team and the Department of Health and the plan in how we would do this and deliver this efficiently so we are looking at every aspect that we can in relation to expanding infrastructure more broadly and more particularly in this region.
There was not an extra investment in the region’s infrastructure following the 2009 downgrading of Ennis and Nenagh, Minister Carroll McNeill said. “The big thing that didn’t happen there was investment in the infrastructure and in bed capacity broadly in the region and that is the huge gap that has taken a really long time to get on top of. What we’ve seen in the last number of years since 2020 in particular is very considerable additional capacity as you walk around and more to come, very significant increases in staff resources”.
Increasing bed capacity is key to easing this pressure, the Minister stated. “Increasing bed capacity is so important. I want to just describe the emergency department if you think of it a bit like an airport we’ve people arriving and they arrive all the time, many people will be discharged from an emergency department about 75% of people who come to an emergency department will be seen and they don’t need to be admitted to the hospital. About 25% do so what we really need is a place for those 25 to go. We need additional beds for them rather than them being stuck in the emergency department.
“Now we get the additional beds two ways, one we have a flow of patients through the hospital, naturally, so people have to be discharged where we’ve seen that they have not been discharged at weekends and they’re able to be discharged, that causes a backlog. Where there aren’t enough beds for them to be able to move that cause a backlog. Here we are focusing on two things as we are nationally, focusing on the processes to make sure that people are working at weekends and that means that they are able to be admitted and discharged, people are able to be admitted correctly and not too many admittances and also enough discharges at the weekend to keep that patient flow at the same time in particular in Limerick which I totally recognise has needed quite significant additional capacity,” she said.
When asked by The Clare Echo if she had confidence in the management of UL Hospitals Group, the Minister stated, “I think this new management team have done an extremely good job, taking over setting a different vision and I can see that difference here and I do have confidence and I think that Bernard’s perspective in this hospital in a time of great difficulty in this period is particularly important because he has been very vocally critical about the hospital and its management team I think we are seeing something quite different now.
