EXTRA PATIENTS would have to be accommodated on hospital wards to alleviate overcrowding in emergency departments, Minister for Health James Reilly said yesterday.
Speaking in the wake of the announcement of a statutory investigation by the Health Information and Quality Authority into the emergency department of Dublin’s Tallaght Hospital, Dr Reilly said it was not wise, fair or safe to leave the entire burden of what happened in emergency departments on the shoulders of doctors and nurses in those units.
“It needs to be shared throughout the hospital. It is much safer to do that . . . in fact I think 600 hospitals in America have now adopted an escalation plan where when a certain number of people appear in their emergency department they automatically start transferring people to wards,” he said.
“We have to start getting aggressive about this. It’s not safe to have so many people tight together in a small area with risk of cross-infection, with people moving out to corridors where there isn’t proper supervision, that just isn’t sustainable.
“And this is not about money. This is about organisation, this is about a willingness to accept part of the problem rather than parking it down below in the emergency department and saying ‘No, no, no we can’t have that up here’,” he added.
Last week the Dublin county coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty said Tallaght Hospital sounded like a “very dangerous” place after presiding over an inquest into the death of local man Thomas Walsh (65), who died at the hospital on March 2nd last while in a “virtual ward” or corridor awaiting a bed.
Dr Reilly said he understood changes had been made since this incident. Extra patients are now placed on wards in Tallaght.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said this was overcrowding the whole hospital and there was a “high risk of an adverse event” as a result.