A growing shortage of acute hospital beds across the region is resulting in waiting lists for essential treatment and impacting on patient outcomes, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA ) has warned this week.
The IHCA has urged health service management to significantly increase bed capacity and access to operating theatres across the region to address the repeated cancellation of hospital appointments and operations in response to ongoing emergency department (ED ) overcrowding.
The Government’s €443 million Waiting List Act Plan for 2023 has set a target to reduce waiting lists for outpatient appointments and inpatient and day case treatment and procedures nationally by 69,000 (10 per cent ) by the end of the year compared with the number waiting at the start of 2023. This would equate to a reduction of approximately 12,800 across the Saolta Group.
Instead, more than 3,400 people have been added to the three main hospital waiting lists in the region since the start of the year, an increase of almost three per cent.
According to the IHCA this is because the shortage of beds is so severe that acutely ill patients are admitted, and essential surgical and other care has to be cancelled due to the capacity deficits.
A total of 2,851 appointments or operations were cancelled during December 2022 and January 2023.
More than a third (988 or 35 per cent ) of these cancellations were at Galway University Hospitals, which continues to experience very high demand for hospital care resulting in some of the highest numbers of people being treated on trolleys and awaiting admission to a hospital bed.
Consultants say the overcrowding crisis and increase in cancellations are being compounded by a severe lack of adequate acute bed capacity, and consultant vacancies in the region.
Just 69 additional inpatient beds have been opened over the past three years at hospitals in the Saolta Group, including 13 beds at University Hospital Galway, 46 beds at Letterkenny University Hospital and 10 beds at Mayo University Hospital.
That amounts to just seven per cent of the 970 extra acute hospital beds opened nationwide since the start of 2020, compared with the west/northwest accounting for approximately one sixth of the national population.
The IHCA has also warned that occupancy rates in the west and northwest are the highest in the country, and dangerously above the maximum occupancy rate.
The association has welcomed plans for a new elective hospital is planned for Galway; however progress has been extremely slow, with the new facility – likely to be located at Merlin Park Hospital – not due to be operational until 2028. It has called for more ambitious targets for new hospital builds, along with funding for a rapid build programme and greater focus on consultant staffing plans.
“There is a serious concern that unmanageable waiting lists for care are severely impacting healthcare outcomes for some of our most vulnerable patients,” said IHCA president Professor Robert Landers. “Government needs to agree, fund and timetable plans to expand hospital capacity and consultant staffing in the west and northwest region.
“Nationally, we estimate that we need to deliver and open at least 700 hundred extra hospital beds every year for the next seven years, while appointing around an additional 300 permanent consultants on an annual basis, in order to keep patients off trolleys and bring down waiting lists for hospital treatment.
“For the Saolta Group, this equates to around 120 beds each year until 2030 in order to treat patients in a timely manner, bring down unacceptable waiting lists and address population and demand changes.”
