The HSE today announced figures for trolley waiting times in 2006 and presented the findings of its survey of emergency department patients.
John O'Brien, national director of the HSE Winter Plan, said that on average there were between 95,000 and 104,000 attendances at emergency departments each month in 2006. Of those 22 per cent were admitted to hospital with 9 out of 10 patients being admitted without having to wait.
Of the 10 per cent of patients who had to wait to get a bed on a ward, the vast majority (over 70 per cent) had to wait less than 12 hours, However, between May and December last year the number of patients waiting up to six hours rose by 13 per cent while the number waiting more than 24 hours fell by 5 per cent.
Mr O'Brien said that between late 2005 and early 2006: "We would have about 15 hospitals regularly appearing with patients waiting over 24 hours; that has reduced now to three or four. . . I think that is a very significant improvement in the system.
A spokeswoman for Patient Focus, the organisation which represents the interests of patients throughout the HSE, told ireland.comit welcomed the cut in waiting times but said: "The momentum of progress made has to be maintained."
Minister for Health Mary Harney has also welcomed the findings but admits there is more to do.
"Among the encouraging results from the survey is that of the 1,600 patients interviewed 76 per cent of these were satisfied with their experience of the Emergency Department," she said today. "However, there are clearly areas where improvements must continue to be made and this research is extremely useful in highlighting these aspects of the service in our A&Es."
The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) said that the HSE's figures are irrelevant to the experiences of patients as they only measure the time it takes for a patient to be allocated a bed after a consultant decides they are to be admitted.
Liam Doran, INO chief executive, told ireland.com: "The only time that matters to patients is the time it takes for the system to deal with them. It is a patient's journey through A&E that matters in the real world from when they first arrive at A&E, through being seen by a doctor, their treatment and eventual discharge or admission.
"This is the waiting time that the HSE should be measuring."
Sinn Féin Health spokesperson Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the HSE's claim that there has been major improvements in emergency department services is undermined because "no account is taken of the time - often many hours - spent waiting to be seen by a consultant".
He called on the Government to provide enough beds to prevent seriously ill patients "spending many hours and sometimes days in A&E because sufficient beds are not available to admit them to hospital wards".
Dr Ciaran Browne of the HSE's Performance Monitoring Unit indicated that the HSE would begin to rollout a monitoring system that would include "total patient experience time", and that this would begin in four or five weeks time.
This means that the HSE's emergency department waiting time figures will eventually take into consideration the time it takes for patients to be dealt with "from registering at the front desk to being admitted to a ward or discharged".
Dr Browne also said the HSE's current figures do not include patients who have been transferred to an admission lounge; they have been admitted to the hospital but have not yet been allocated a bed in a ward. Six hospitals in the State at present have admission lounges, while others are under construction.
The HSE also announced today the results of a survey conducted on 1,600 patients who had used an accident and emergency department.
The survey shows that 76 per cent of those attending and accident and emergency department were satisfied with the service they received, and 93 per cent reported that they had been treated with dignity and respect.
Most patients (79 per cent) said they were clinically assessed within an hour of their arrival to A&E, and 75 per cent of patients who needed to be examined by a doctor said they were examined within three hours.
The Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, welcomed the survey results: "Hospital staff in our accident and emergency departments work very diligently to provide the best service possible to patients. . . the quality of the service can be judged by honest feedback from service users and in this case patients.
"I look forward to seeing further improvements in the our A&E Departments as a result of the roll out of the HSE Winter Initiative programme."
But Mr Doran said that 76 per cent of patients reporting they were happy with the service they received is irrelevant as most people do not have a choice about which emergency department to attend.
The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine welcomed the survey but said it believed the HSE should have consulted the association over the survey.
It went on to say that the demographics of the survey were not representative as "the majority of emergency department patients requiring hospital admission are elderly".