This article is from page 4 of the 2014-12-02 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
THE number of patients left on trolleys at the University Hospital Limerick doubled last month.
According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation Trolley Watch, the single recognised measure of the number of patients on trolleys, as many as 484 people were left on trolleys during October compared to 244 in October last year.
This is a 98 per cent increase in the number of sick people stranded without a proper hospital bed.
September also showed a marked increase of 59.7 per cent, from 551 sick people on trolleys in September 2014 to 345 in September 2013.
And while the numbers on trolleys increased, the number of emergency admissions to the overcrowded hospital and other hospitals in the region fell. Preliminary f gures report that the University Limerick Hospital Group, of which Ennis is a member, had 2,423 emergency admissions in September 2014, compared with 2,461 in September 2013.
Figures for October are not available. There was also an increase in the number of people presenting to the Emergency Department in Limerick in September. A three per cent increase is ref ec tive of 149 more people using the hospital over that month – an average of f ve extra patients per day. As many as 4,821 people attended the overcrowded emergency department in September this year compared to 4,672 people who attended during the same period last year. At this month’s meeting of the HSE West Forum members Cllr Malachy McCreesh (SF) from Limerick asked why the opening date for the new Emergency Department cannot be moved up to alleviate the pressure. “I think the build has been completed for some time and it needs to be f tted out,” he said. Cllr John Carroll (FF) from Tipperary told the meeting he visits the hospital regularly and there are trolleys “criss-crossed all over the place” in the emergency department. He asked why the health watchdog HIQA shows an interest in certain areas but not the over crowded A&E. “This is ongoing. It is totally unsafe practice and it is downgrading for people. There is no point saying we will have a new department in 2016. We need to deal with it now. These are human beings we are dealing with,” he said.