The Irish Congress of Trade Unions today (January 25) told a Dail committee that "at least 1500 new, acute hospital beds, roster changes for senior clinicians and measures to tackle staff shortages will be needed to deal with the severe overcrowding crisis in hospital emergency departments."
Addressing the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health's special hearing on the overcrowding crisis, Congress General Secretary Patricia King said overcrowding had "almost doubled in the last decade and it is typically the elderly and working families that suffer most and have their care compromised."
The Congress statement to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health was presented by General Secretary Patricia King and Liam Doran, head of the Irish Nurses and Midwives" Organisation (INMO) and chair of the Congress Health Sector Committee.
Citing figures from the INMO, Ms King told the Committee that there had been "an unacceptable increase in the number of patients on trolleys in Emergency Departments over the last decade, rising from just over 55,000 to almost 94,000."
She said the onset of the recession after 2008 saw funding and staff cut, with resultant cuts in service and capacity. Ms King explained that Congress was proposing a number of short and medium term solutions that could help resolve the crisis.
"Firstly and most immediately, we need to ensure that senior clinical decision makers are rostered over seven days, at least until the end of the winter period.
"We also need incentivised measures to tackle the staffing crisis that would help boost hospital capacity, along with the reopening of the approximately 150 acute beds that are closed due to staff shortages, Ms King said.
"In the medium term, we will require at least 1500 new, acute beds to help bring our bed numbers into line with international standards, which we fall significantly below at the moment.
"Over the longer term, demographic pressures will require sustained investment in our public, long-term care bed capacity. It will also be necessary to invest in seven day Primary Care services that will ensure people can be treated away from hospital, where appropriate.
"Quite simply, the repeated ongoing overcrowding crisis is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue. It should serve as a source of shame and highlights the severe deficits in our public care infrastructure," she concluded.
Read the Congress Submission on the Future of Healthcare (Aug 2016)
