A 60-year-old man was killed while attempting to walk the 50 miles to his home in Clifden just after being released from hospital.
Seanie Flaherty, a school caretaker, with hearing and speech problems as well as a broken arm had just been released from A&E in UHG in February after he arrived with a suspected fracture.
He’d arrived in UHG via a HSE taxi after being seen by a GP in Clifden. Mr Flaherty injured his arm in a fall at a school.
The taxi driver Danny Ryan who dropped Mr Flaherty to Galway told the inquest he left the man at the hospital and it was up to the hospital to sort transport home.
Mr Flaherty was treated at UHG and told to go to the fracture clinic at Merlin Park the following morning.
Staff at the hospital didn’t know how Mr Flaherty arrived and he indicated he was OK to get home.
But a solicitor for the Flaherty family said that 60-year-old would normally answer yes to questions.
He left the hospital at 6pm, wearing a dark T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms when he set out to walk home. He asked for directions and walked four miles out the Clifden road before being hit by a car. He died instantly.
The jury asked that two recommendations be put in place: that the HSE create a set of guidelines for discharging patients under disability to ensure their safe return home, and that the HSE create a set of guidelines to be given to every taxi driver who brings a patient with disabilities to or from a hospital.
Coroner Ciaran McLoughlin said there were no procedures in UHG for ensuring a man such as Mr Flaherty was brought home safely after treatment.
The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence and recommended that the HSE create a set of guidelines for discharging students to make sure they’re home safer and the HSE create guidelines for every taxi driver who brings a patient such as Mr Flaherty to the hospital.
