Condemned as unfit.
Cavan General Hospital:Its A&E has "no purposeful design" and inadequate emergency ambulance access. Patients on trolleys were being accommodated along a short corridor that inevitably resulted in overspill into a main hospital corridor and the outpatient department. Significant treatment decisions were often very significantly delayed due to lack of access to relevant diagnostic imaging, with consequent risk exposure for patients as well as inappropriate admissions.
Mercy University Hospital, Cork:The physical capacity of its A&E unit is "totally inadequate". The existing ad-hoc arrangements for provision of radiography services to the emergency department need to be urgently addressed. Immediate and consistent access to long-stay community hospital beds and dementia beds is required. The option of purchasing private beds needs to be urgently progressed.
Letterkenny General Hospital:The space in A&E is inappropriate and insufficient to accommodate and process the numbers of patients turning up. As a result, A&E patients can at times be inappropriately accommodated in outpatients, the day surgery unit and on corridors. There is a limited senior decision-making presence in the unit and diagnostics are typically only available office hours on weekdays.
Delays routinely arise as a result of slowness in being able to effect patient transfers.
Wexford General Hospital:Its A&E was not fit for purpose. The taskforce said it supported the development of "an appropriately designed and staffed" emergency department at the hospital. It said access to diagnostics was during office hours from Monday to Friday and this created difficulties for A&E.
There were also insufficient numbers of senior decision-makers in the unit, particularly at night, "with adverse implications for overall patient management and admission rates".
Beaumont Hospital:Patients in the A&E unit were being accommodated on rows of trolleys that appeared to be too close to each other in the centre of the department to allow rapid access to individual patients in the event of an unexpected deterioration in their condition. The unit was "overflowing" when the taskforce visited. Delays were experienced in accessing diagnostics out of hours, hampering rapid decision-making. The bed management team operated from Monday to Friday only.
Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda:The taskforce found its A&E "totally unfit for purpose". It said the additional daily burden of patients in A&E waiting for beds made for an extremely difficult working environment with "a high risk potential". The regular placement of inpatients on trolleys in outpatients was found to be unacceptable but it was noted this was due to lack of space in A&E. Even psychiatric patients were frequently accommodated on trolleys overnight in the unit. This was unsafe.