HEALTH SERVICE Executive management in the west will meet trade unions today to discuss how the region’s €50 million financial deficit is to be tackled.
Figures released by the executive on Friday showed hospitals in the region, which runs from Limerick to Donegal, had overspent by more than €46 million. Community services were also more than €4 million in the red. Details of the cost-containment measures to be proposed today are not yet known.
However, in other regions, management has sought to put in place additional curtailments on the use of agency staff and overtime – moves which can impact on beds and services for patients. The introduction of any new cost-cutting measures would come at a time when hospitals in the region are already under intense pressure.
On Saturday, the HSE in the west made a public appeal to patients to avoid using the emergency department at Galway University Hospital if possible. At that time, there were more than 30 patients waiting in the unit for admission to a hospital bed.
It is understood that by yesterday afternoon there were eight patients waiting in the emergency department for a bed, and a further 10 who had been moved to the hospital’s medical assessment unit.
Meanwhile, nurses at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick are to hold a second work stoppage on Wednesday in protest at overcrowding in the emergency department there. Members of Siptu and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) are to stop work between 8.30am and 12.30pm.
The nurses held a similar work stoppage last Wednesday as part of a campaign aimed at persuading Minister for Health James Reilly to address what they maintain are patient safety concerns at the unit.
The INMO said on Friday that the difficulties being experienced at the hospital were as a result of “the absence of approximately €13 million in funding which was promised for the reconfiguration process by the previous minister but never materialised”.
“Until such time as these outstanding monies are allocated to the hospital providing for the reopening of beds, safe nurse/patient ratios in the emergency department, and the filling of all vacant posts within the hospital, patient safety will continue to be a matter of significant concern for nurses,” it said.
Last week, the Minister dispatched to Limerick a team from his new special delivery unit which is tasked with recommending solutions to the problems in emergency departments.
A spokesman for the Minister said yesterday the report drawn up by the special delivery unit had not yet been finalised but it was expected shortly.
Meanwhile, the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine yesterday urged the introduction of a “full capacity protocol” – the placing of additional inpatient beds on hospital wards – when an emergency department is experiencing serious overcrowding.
It said the full capacity protocol represented “a reasonable, measured and fair approach to the significant dangers created by emergency department over-crowding”.
However the placing of additional beds on wards is opposed by nursing unions.
