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A SERIES OF measures have been announced this evening by the HSE on how it plans to deal with overcrowding.
It emerged that an additional 63 acute hospital beds will be placed in a number of hospitals; 28 beds in Galway University Hospital, 15 beds in the Mater, eight beds in Kilkenny and 12 beds in Tullamore, Offaly.
Another 60 beds will be introduced across 10 hospitals for the next four weeks in order to allow patients, who would otherwise remain in an acute bed, stay while their nursing home application is being completed and processed.
A number of private hospitals have also come forward to provide help to the public sector.
New stats released by the HSE have shown how 270 people have been hospitalised by the flu this season. Dr Kevin Kelleher, director of public health with the HSE, said hospitals are being overwhelmed by the number of flu cases.
He urged the public, especially those over the age of 65, to get vaccinated. It was also noted that 15 of the 270 people admitted to hospital were placed in intensive care units across the country.
Kelleher said: “The best protection for people from the flu virus is the flu vaccine, yet every year many people in at risk groups fail to get vaccinated and so put themselves at risk of serious illness or even death.
The flu vaccine cannot give you the flu as it does not contain any live flu virus and all those at risk who have not been vaccinated should get the vaccine as soon as possible to make sure that they are protected.
As the overcrowding crisis in our hospitals deepens, the HSE warned that they had not reached the peak season for flu admissions.
Kelleher said it is expected that influenza activity “will peak in the next 1-2 weeks and that increased influenza activity will continue for the next 4-5 weeks”.
He warned that healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, therapists and carers also need to get the seasonal flu vaccine every year.
It is important that all those working in frontline healthcare protect themselves and to prevent flu from spreading to vulnerable patients.
Dangers
Meanwhile, Minister for Older People, Helen McEntee echoed Kelleher’s comments, urging at risk groups to get the inoculation as soon as possible. Those at risk include everyone aged 65 years and over, pregnant women, residents of nursing homes and healthcare workers.
Mc Entee said: “People aged over-65 are considered to be one of the at-risk groups who are encouraged to get the flu vaccine and it is welcome that uptake rates have improved in these groups.
However, my information is that only around half of older people on medical cards have taken up the vaccine. “I want to be very clear that there are services available, and that looking after our older people is a priority.
We now have one of the lowest numbers on record of people waiting to leave hospital to go home or to a place in a care setting that is better for them and meets their needs.”
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Influenza A is rampant in hospitals this year, like I’ve never seen before, scary numbers, so I’d strongly advise not visiting people in hospitals unless you have to. In fact I’ve no idea why apart from one or two hospitals, that advice hasn’t been issued for every hospital in the country..
God help us when it mutates and there’s a pandemic. We’re way overdue for one they come in fairly predictable waves
It will be 6 months before there’s a vaccine and rolling it out will take months too. If our system can’t handle a normal winter…,,
Ryan every country, especially countries with larger more urban populations than Ireland would be under severe pressure if a flu pandemic broke out…can’t the blame our system on that. It’s our lack of investment in primary care clinics which is causing most problems. GP surgeries can only handle so much and hospitals are for specialised treatment.
So it begins; hospital beds cut drastically under FG government and now their friends running private hospitals get their hands on HSE monies to mop up the over spill. Just the thin edge to begin with!!!!
@Bowe
Yep let’s leave in with the public sector because they are doing such a good job.
The PAC had an expert from the NHS and she stated that the biggest threat to the irish health service is the private health sector.
@M Bowe: I recall CJH cutting beds back in the 80′s. FF downgrading hospitals so it is all political partys
@Kieran O’Sullivan you are a master in stupidity
Ah ha here comes private sector to save the day i wonder what politicians own or have shares in the private health care system my god this is going to be the biggest sell out ever and yet again the irish have fallen for it.Private health care cost are going to rocket up.
American health care, here we foools come so one day i was out cutting my hedge and accidentally severed my 2 fingers i rushed into the hospital met a surgeon i said stitch my finger back on he said well sir you do know that the big finger costs more then the Little to stitch i said how much more. he said 5000 for big finger 4000 for little finger but i only have 4000 welcome to private health care system !
The Bons Secours private healthcare system is operated on a not for profit basis supposedly.
Did you not have health insurance?
Go to a bons hospital without the right sort of health insurance and see what happens.
Their motto is Good Help to Those in Need.
Good Help to those with cash more like
Sorry Mary I could I be so stupid, the HSE is a shining example of efficiency and value for money. It has been an outstanding success since its incorporation.
I think it’s you that has the PHD in stupidity.
I hear you. My sister had no problems in America getting a cast, but endless trouble six weeks later finding any doctor prepared to take it off. It’s down to the fear of liability.
HM Simon Harris looks like he needs to add 3 shredded wheat to his diet..
The man has Crohn’s Disease, often makes it difficult to put on and maintain weight
I couldn’t care less what any politician looks like, TBH. I wish they’d do their job instead of catering to lucrative private concerns. I had no gripe with substandard hospitals being closed because they certainly were. But national health coverage should be in place by now. I still can’t fathom why the Children’s Hospital can’t be built on a accessible site.
Imagine if 500 people needed to be hospitalised.
I’ve heard that some hospitals are rejecting marginal cases. These are cases which would be admitted if pressure on beds was not so severe.
The solution is not to get seriously sick.
Tony I know lay people shouldn’t be judgemental on medical matters but anytime I’ve been in A&E I’ve never seen anyone who appeared to be in urgent need of attention, with even ambulance admissions sent back to the queue. I would imagine one major factor is that GPs are ineffective to a degree unless they get medical test results and they can only obtain these in a hospital!
They triage everyone so anyone red would have been whisked in already or taken in the ambulance entrance
Ryan I’m aware of that because they triage folk after they have sat down and you invariably see them return to the waiting area after. Obviously there must be serious cases whisked off but when everyone gets inside they are usually given a trolley while being tested which must account in the stats. I saw one lively lad and his girlfriend inside and she was instructing him to sit it out even if he was bored but he wanted to get his “injury” on the record…let’s just say he may have had a mishap in his white hiace van.
Ryan KT is easy to blame GPs but remember: hospital doctors have the availability or continuous monitoring, repeated nursing tests, X-rays, lab tests etc. GPs have no such comfort measures and thus if they are not sure they MUST send them to hospital. As someone who works in a hospital it is something I sometimes forget.
@Tony don’t get sick any day of the year in this kip
@John B and don’t forget this magic Dr surgery. You the taxpayer must pay for everything like bloods blood pressure monitors and dressings. You go to hospital and get referred on. So don’t give them any more fecking ways to charge the taxpayer
That’s possibly true to a degree – difficult to get bloodwork, etc. done out-of-hours unless in a hospital. However, not everyone presenting at A&E is referred there by a GP, and what I can’t understand is the disparity in terms of access to A&E in the first place…medical card holders can walk in with no GP referral and are not charged €100 for the privilege. I think applying the same rule to all presenting patients might alleviate things somewhat. No reason a medical card holder can’t be “triaged” by a (free visit to their) GP/out-of-hours doc, to determine whether a referral to A&E is actually warranted. If they arrive into A&E as their first port-of-call with a snotty nose, and without a referral, they should be subject to the same €100 charge as non-medical-cardholders.
I’m a Type 1 diabetic and absolutely terrified of getting sick- not the fear of being ill but the conditions of where id end up!! There are many other people in the same boat — frightening to think about it.
In fairness if these 270 had the flu jab in sept then the numbers in and E would have been halved. People need to take responsibility. GP’s need to send out letters to patients over 65 to get the jab and the older patients need to take responsibility for their own health and heed their advice. The front line staff in A and E cant carry the burden of what older people should have ensured 3 months ago.
@saoirse janneau: you shouldn’t be allowed into hospital with flu if you can’t show a flu vaccine cert.
I would say many folk believe they can manage a flu even if very unpleasant and then there is the fear factor about side effects from the vaccination which put many off. Why don’t the hse publish the hard facts about side effects to allay the public fear. Many people I’ve listened to speak of getting ‘bad doses’ but won’t go as far as to say it was a flu so there must be other viruses circulating.
Run the public service into the ground so we have to rely on private health care .
The politics needs to be taken out of the health service in this country. The money that’s being pumped isn’t being managed properly, managers falling over managers and the ones doing the work not being paid enough or appreciated enough.
Would it not be a sound idea to enforce the flu jab on all citizens? Surely it’s a logical damage control measure?
@Rebecca De Stanleigh:@Rebecca De Stanleigh:got a flu jab ,got bad flu after….
It wasn’t from the flu jab. It cannot give you the flu. It’s not possible. It is possible to have symptoms in the form of a reaction or it’s possible that you got a strain not covered in the vaccine.
The vaccine is like an eggshell with no egg. There is no virus, only the shell but the body only recognises the “shell” and mounts an immune response in the same way thus protecting from that strain.
That sounds logical Amanda but for the fact most people aren’t informed as some but what is not made readily public is the stats on flu ‘side effects’ by severity. In fact I’d imagine very little large scale follow up is done apart from what the drug manufacturers tell us!
@Amanda I know a number of people who got the flu after the flu jab, not from the flu jab. I thought the whole point of the jab was to help you avoid getting the flu.
They manufacture the vaccine well in advance. They do their best to manufacture a vaccine that they think will cover strains that will be active that winter. They don’t always get it right. Not all strains are always included so there is still about a 30% chance of getting the flu. But 70% protection is better than nothing- especially for the elderly and those who are immunosuppressed.
Also it’s not just about he person getting the vaccine. To fight illness we rely on herd immunity. We need to people vaccinated to help people who can’t have the vaccine. It helps stop viruses from spreading.
Trevor you can get ineffective batches for various reasons such as being stored incorrectly or the victims may either get a different strain or catch the actual strain before the vaccine takes hold. Mostly though people just get other nasty non flu viruses because very few samples are actually tested by gps.
Well there you go Amanda has replied to your post…must have overlooked mine :)
Good point Amanda.
Both valid points Winston
Delighted that Simple Si had his jab. However who is going to pay for the overflow from public hospital to private?. And why is it possible that Simple Si can allow so many public hospital beds to remain closed?. And why do we have to worry about Minister Naughten being clipped of his bicycle and why did he take up a bed for so many days? In the meantime why was Dame Edna’s cycling club given 20,000 euro towards its club and equipment from a fund for disalilities groups?
.
Sign me up, after two days back at work I’m thinking I’d take one of those places!
I wouldn’t believe a single word that comes from the HSE, they have brought the art of lying and spin to new levels over the last decade. The reason the problem never gets solved is because we believe the rubbish that the spew. There was a senior HSE liar on Primetime tonight, in one sentence he said they have done numerous bed studies but when asked how many beds, roughly, are required by MO’C he said he count not “guess” a figure like that and that further research was needed. We have had overcrowding in A+E, at winter, with people on trolleys for at least 10 years. Not fixing it is not because they cannot, it is because they choose not to fix it and when they tell you otherwise it’s bare faced lies.
@Lazlo Saint Pierre:
Saw that. Thank God Miriam O’Callaghan was on hand to flutter her eyelashes at him.
Flu causing the problem,what a load of crap.fg do not care,none of their families will be on a trolly.doctors warned of increase this time of year, Harris didn’t give a damn.
The start of a fully privatised health service. It happens slowly at first, then more suttle changes come into effect. Government wants everything off the books if it can. Big Government sucks!! We really are concerned attaching the profit motive to everything is not the vision we have for Ireland. We must stop this!!!
This is a sticking plaster approach by the HSE and that Clown Harris. I see a photo of him getting an Injection on the screen, it is into the head he needs it. Will the citizens come out onto the streets in protest , this is far more important than water, out onto the streets , protest for a the health of our loved ones, come on citizens this is a Real Imergency.
I wonder what the Health and Safety Authority would make of the health and safety implicatiions of overcrowding in A&E in HSE hospitals in Ireland?
The problem is a multifaceted problem. There need to be more operational beds, more nurses, more doctors, more step down facilities, faster and more efficient diagnostics, superior home care support and better primary care facilities.
More widespread flu and pneumococcal vacines would also help.
Last Christmas, I was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia. I was to be admitted to hospital. I declined to go in. My wife nursed me. I made a full recovery.
I regard hospitals as potentially dangerous places. I had a bad experience in the past. It is too dangerous to risk hospital admission at the moment unless you are in a life threatening situation. Even then it may do more harm than good. I lost a friend to MRSA complications acquired in a hospital.
Next year and the year after and afepter that and so on we will continue have this dangerous overcrowding situation.
Wimps.
Considering there is tax payer funded hospitals an wards closed all over the country surely they should be used. So the great privatisation agenda continues. These lot should not get away with this! But as we’ve seen the sheeple will more or less pick the same wasters. Well they deserve everything they get when they’re paying through the nose for healthcare!
Give the staff more money,liam doran says that’s what’s wrong with the health service.
How about Doctors and Nurses contributing to our Health Service and offer their services for 3 / 5 years after qualifications in return for what the State did for them.
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