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Private hospital beds to be used to ease Emergency Department overcrowding

Many emergency departments are experiencing very high numbers of patients presenting at hospital.

HEALTH MINISTER SIMON Harris has announced a series of new measures to ease pressure on hospital Emergency Departments, including using private hospital beds for patients.

Speaking today after he met with members of the Emergency Department Taskforce over the ongoing trolley crisis at hospitals across the country, Harris said that efforts were being made to improve the situation.

With Ireland currently experiencing the “flu season”, many emergency departments are experiencing very high numbers of patients presenting at hospital.

record high of 677 patients were on trolleys in hospitals across the country last Wednesday.

The numbers have gone down since then, but Emergency Departments are still subject to a lot of overcrowding.

Figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) show that there were 555 patients on trolleys today.

Measures agreed today to alleviate the issue include:

  • The utilisation of beds in private hospitals
  • The opening of additional beds in a number of hospitals including St James’s, the Mater and Beaumont
  • An increase in the number of senior clinical decision makers on hand in hospitals in the evenings and at weekends
  • Enhanced access to diagnostics, increased access to transitional care beds
  • Increased access to transitional care beds

The government has come in for strong criticism from doctors people working on the frontline over the crisis since the start of the year.

“The bottom line is that the system nationwide does not quite have the capacity to deal with the demands placed upon it,” consultant gastroenterologist Dr Anthony O’Connor wrote in TheJournal.ie last week.

Harris said today that it was “unacceptable that patients are experiencing very difficult conditions in our EDs”.

However, we are beginning to see an impact from the exceptional measures being undertaken and the intense efforts of all our staff across the health service at this time.

He said his department wanted to focus on “making sure we have plans in place to fix the situation in our emergency departments and break the cycle of overcrowding in the health service”.

Read: Dr Anthony O’Connor: Things we could do to get more people off trolleys

Read: ‘This isn’t a trolley crisis – It’s a system in meltdown’: Minister’s commitments ‘worthless’ say doctors

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    Mute Paul Corcoran
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    Oct 11th 2018, 6:40 PM

    But will anything actually happen Callinan now?

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    Mute bmul
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    Oct 11th 2018, 6:50 PM

    @Paul Corcoran: no he probably has to much dirt on those in power

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    Mute Johnny Mason
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    Oct 11th 2018, 6:50 PM

    @Paul Corcoran: after he apologizes they will ask him to pay for the car park tickets he owes that took place in the dark of night !

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    Mute @mdmak33
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    Oct 11th 2018, 7:04 PM

    Surely callinan will be brought to the courts,this nearly destroyed sgt mc cabe and his family.

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    Mute Mari
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    Oct 11th 2018, 8:16 PM

    Very well written article .. it was a great read

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    Mute stgdsf
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    Oct 11th 2018, 9:26 PM

    @Mari: yes excellent summary

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    Mute Jack O’Meara
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    Oct 11th 2018, 7:20 PM

    I’d like to see more light thrown in Terry Prone’s role in all this…

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    Mute Lovely weather
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    Oct 11th 2018, 7:08 PM

    An organisation so corrupt they consider it normal.

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    Mute Tony Maher
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    Oct 11th 2018, 7:25 PM

    just back from Cold war tour of Berlin. visited Stazi prisons. sick to the stomach that this did happen here too.

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    Mute Chris Scarffe-Cody
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    Oct 11th 2018, 10:20 PM

    No obviously nobody will be held to account that’s not the way it works, it’s the ah sure that’s grand mentality and until that changes nothing else ever will

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    Mute Sean Conway
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    Oct 11th 2018, 9:26 PM

    It looks like ‘the lunatics have taken over the asylum’ a long time ago here in ireland. as the song says.

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    Mute Smidgen Dublin
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    Oct 12th 2018, 10:34 AM

    I don’t understand The Journal’s writing standards, e.g,.: ‘…and the usual ‘watch out huns’ Christmas edition wasn’t going to cut it..’. What is this?!?

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    Mute Bewarethebeardz
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    Nov 14th 2018, 8:17 AM

    Will Callinan be charged with anything? Perjury, Fraud, Frame-up, Collusion etc. Or does he just sail off into the sunset?
    Please say it isn’t so.

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