A Clare Independent TD claims the government can no longer afford to ignore the necessity of reopening the Accident and Emergency Unit in Ennis.
New figures obtained by Deputy Violet Anne Wynne from the Department of Health have revealed that since 2019, 26,918 patients left UHL’s Emergency Department without receiving treatment.
University Hospital Limerick currently facilitates 6% of all ED presentations in the country and in the first six months of the year, 3,200 patients left the Dooradoyle site without completing their full episodes of care.
Kilrush Deputy Violet Anne Wynne says the current setup is detrimental to public safety and healthcare staff morale.
Listen back to the full interview below
Following a query from Clare FM, the UL Hospitals Group issued the following response
University Hospital Limerick continues to manage very high attendances at its Emergency Department. A total of 79,891 patients attended our Emergency Department in 2022, the busiest year to date and an increase of 4% on 2021.
The data in relation to patients who left the ED without completing their treatment is in line with expectations. For example, in the first six months of this year, a total of 3,200 patients left the ED in UHL without having completed their episode of care. This accounted for 6% of the total number of such patients in EDs around the country. UHL accounts for approximately 6% of the total ED presentations in Ireland.
The purpose of EDs is to deal with serious and unexpected illness and injury. We continue to see patients in our ED whose clinical needs could be more appropriately addressed by self-care, pharmacists, GPs, GP out-of-hours services and Injury Units.
In this context, it is inevitable that EDs and their associated hospitals, whose capacity is exceeded by such demand, must clinically prioritise those who must be treated first and those who may need to wait, or attend a more appropriate care setting.
To ensure this process is clinically safe for patients, Irish hospitals use the internationally tested Manchester Triage Tool which prioritises patients into a number of categories based on their clinical needs. Where a patient is seriously ill or injured, their needs will be prioritised above those with less serious conditions.
Ideally, hospitals would be in a position to treat patients on their arrival. However, as demand inevitably overtakes capacity, prioritisation and consequential waiting may occur. In this regard, some patients with less serious needs may choose to avail of alternatives options.
This is not to minimise the frustration of the many patients who face long waits to see a doctor. We are committed to reducing patient experience times (PET) for both our admitted and non-admitted patients. In 2022, 76% of patients who attended our ED did not require admission to hospital. The recently published HIQA report on UHL found that waiting times for non-admitted patients have improved this year. The median PET time for non-admitted patients in our ED last year was 7.6 hours and this had reduced to 6.6 hours in the first quarter of 2023.
We continue to promote alternative options to ED where this is appropriate. The current average PET time in Ennis Injury Unit, for example, is under 90 minutes.
