More than 1,000 people had to wait in Laois and Offaly hospital A&Es
Step down care solutions have been demanded for Laois and Offaly by a local TD on the release of figures which show that over 1,000 people had to wait for care at Portlaoise and Tullamore hospitals in the first quarter of 2023.
Speaking in the Dáil, Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley highlighted the need to address capacity issues in local Emergency Departments (ED/A&E) and the need for more step-down beds such as those promised at Abbeyleix hospital and the expansion of home care services.
He said 888,000 people on hospital waiting lists with record numbers of people leaving emergency departments without treatment. He outlined the statistics.
"Figures released to Sinn Féin show that 497 people left Portlaoise Emergency Department (ED) between January and March 2023 without being treated. In Tullamore, 546 people left the ED without being treated between January and March this year. These are alarming figures. This is despite the best efforts of the front-line staff in the emergency departments of both Tullamore and Portlaoise,’’ he said.
The Portlaoise-based TD said the situation can be fixed.
"One solution I have persistently put forward is the need to improve discharge times. To do this, we need to increase step-down capacity to free up beds in the acute hospitals. In Portlaoise, between January and March this year, we lost 671 bed days due to the delayed discharges compared with 506 for the same period in 2021. It has become worse because we do not have the step-down and community care services.
"The situation in Portlaoise has deteriorated. While the bed days lost in the same period in Tullamore have shown a reduction over the two years, which we welcome, there are still 428 days lost in that three-month period. That is too many days lost,’’ said the TD.
Dep Stanley said solutions to help have not yet been implemented locally.
“These figures underline the ongoing scandal of the 12 step-down beds that were supposed to be delivered in the Abbeyleix Hospital and that are still not opened. I raised this last week with Mr. Bernard Gloster, the Chief Executive Officer of the HSE, and impressed on him the importance of doing this," he said.
He added that delaying discharges is the lack of home care packages.
"People who are ready to be discharged cannot leave because they do not have a home care worker. We need to fix that situation,’’ he said.
The TD was angry with the situation saying it is now scandalous.
“The trolley scandal the Government pledged to end is now worse than ever. It used to be January and into February but now it has become an all-year-round threat to patient safety. We need an immediate increase of 1,000 hospital beds with a total of 2,500 additional beds required over the next couple of years, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI," he said.
He said the health services can be fixed but it needs a Government and a Minister with the political will to do so.