MINSTER FOR Health James Reilly has said Tallaght hospital should address without delay any immediate safety issues identified in its emergency department as part of an investigation by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa).
The authority has directed the hospital to stop, from next week, placing patients on trolleys in corridors near its emergency department while they await admission to beds. It said this practice could pose an unacceptable and serious risk to patients.
The instruction followed an unannounced inspection of the hospital’s emergency department earlier this week which formed part of a statutory inquiry which the authority is currently carrying out into safety in the unit. On foot of the inspection last Wednesday, the authority found a number of issues which it said “may have the potential to pose serious risks to the health and welfare of persons receiving care there”.
The investigation found there were 20 patients in corridors and in the emergency department, waiting for admission to beds. It found that five patients had been waiting more than 24 hours from the time doctors had decided they required admission.
The inspection also found that one patient with tuberculosis was placed for more than 72 hours in a clinical room which was not an isolation facility and which opened directly on to a corridor in which other patients were undergoing care.
The authority said this posed a potential serious risk of cross-infection to patients. It also found a cardiac patient who at the time of the inspection had not been assessed or admitted by any in-house clinical team.
The hospital has been told that after next Thursday patients who are due to be admitted must no longer be placed on trolleys in corridors near the emergency unit.
The Department of Health said last night that Dr Reilly was aware of the correspondence between the authority and the hospital.
“The Minister will not be making any comment until the investigation by Hiqa is completed. However, he expects that any immediate safety issues identified by Hiqa will be addressed without delay by the hospital. He also expects the hospital to co-operate fully with all aspects of Hiqa’s investigation.”
Meanwhile, nurses have demanded that management at the hospital reopen closed beds following the investigation carried out by the authority.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said it welcomed the authority’s findings and said they should be used by all hospital managements and the Health Service Executive nationally as a turning point in dealing with overcrowded emergency departments.
It said management at Tallaght hospital must immediately reopen 28 beds which are currently shut.
The union also said the HSE regionally “must mobilise so that the 63 patients who have been clinically discharged from Tallaght, but for whom there is no long-term care bed at this time, must be found a continuing care facility, thus freeing up the acute bed in Tallaght”.
It also said it would continue with its long-term policy that the placing of additional beds in wards was not a solution to overcrowding in emergency departments. It said such a move would “only compromise the care of the entire patient population”.
The union also said the authority should carry out similar inspections in other major emergency departments around the country. The findings of the investigation at Tallaght could have significant implications for emergency departments in other hospitals. The investigation’s terms of reference stated that it can make “national recommendations” if it considers them necessary.
