An average of 58 delayed hospital discharges daily is preventing progress being made in ending the trolley crisis in emergency departments, Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher has said.
He was responding to the revelation by the Health Service Executive (HSE) that the number of bed days lost due to delayed discharges across all public hospitals in the State for the first nine months of this year was 142,472.
Mr Kelleher, who obtained the information in response to a parliamentary question, said on Wednesday this was happening despite patients being well enough to be discharged from hospital by their doctor.
“In many cases, this is as a result of a lack of home help hours, home care packages or community-based respite support in nursing homes or rehabilitative centres,’’ he added.
“On average, there are 15,830 delayed discharges every month, or 58 per day,’’ he said.
“When we compare this figure with average trolley figures of about 350 per day, we can see that progress is definitely possible if the will and resourcing is in place.’’
Blockage
Mr Kelleher said the hospital system had a starting point, an end point, and many stages in between.
“If any of these stages sees a blockage, the rest of the system will get backed up,’’ he said.
He said delayed discharges because of a lack of post-hospital care were unforgivable.
If the difference between a person being discharged or not was a couple of home help hours daily for a week or two, then the system needed to be robust and flexible enough to respond, Mr Kelleher said.
He called for more “joined-up thinking’’ between those managing hospitals and those responsible for post-hospital care in the community.
“There is little point requesting post-hospital support a day before a person is due to be discharged; it needs to take place far in advance to ensure that there is no delay,’’ he said.
The HSE figures indicated the bed days lost ranged from more than 13,000 in January and February to more than 16,000 in the months of March, May, June, August and September. The highest number of bed days lost was in April, when the figure reached 17,159.
