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OVER 118,000 people went without beds in 2019, according to end-of-year analysis by the INMO.
The medical organisation said that this confirms 2019 was the worst-ever year for hospital overcrowding since records began – 9% higher than 2018.
Over 1,300 of the patients were children younger than 16. The worst months for overcrowding in 2019 were November (12,055), October (11,452), and September (10,641).
The worst-hit hospitals in 2019 included:
The INMO said that understaffing and a lack of capacity as key drivers of overcrowding. There are 411 fewer inpatient beds in Ireland’s hospitals today than a decade ago, despite a larger, older population.
INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said: “Things are getting worse, not better. These figures should be falling, but we’re going the wrong direction. 2019 saw thousands more patients without proper beds – often at one of the most vulnerable points in their lives.
“Overcrowding used to be a winter problem. Now it’s an all-year problem, which gets worse in winter. The most frustrating part is that we know how to solve this problem: increase staffing and bed capacity, expand community care, and get going with the Sláintecare reforms.”
Health Minister Simon Harris said this year has been a very “challenging year”. He added that it is important to look at other metrics when discussing the 118,000 figure, stating that there has been 30,000 additional people presenting to emergency departments in 2019.
Of this number, about 5,500 people were over the age of 65, while about 9,000 additional children have presented to accident and emergency departments.
“What’s actually happening is our health services getting busier and busier every year we’re treating more people every year,” he said, stating extra capacity is being put into the system.
Responding to the report, Sinn Féin’s Maurice Quinlivan described the figures as “truly appalling”.
He said: “The figures show a startling increase from a figure of 1,814 in 2006 when the figures were first collated to an unimaginable figure of 13,941 in 2019. This is truly appalling and shows utter contempt from the Government.
“These are not just figures they are real people, people we know, often family members and many of them elderly often lingering on trollies for hours or days.”
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Leo is proud of his record that’s all that matters
@Damien Barton: And Simon will be appalled, no doubt.
@Arch Angel: of course
@Damien Barton: no doubt he is although it doesn’t affect him personally by any means ;) sure let’s all vote for FG and FF again this year because things will certainly change for the better then …
@Marcus Kittel: if they get voted in again well I just don’t know then
Simon Harris, if this happened under your watch in the real world you’d be sacked long ago.
It was simply shortsighted to close hospitals like Nenagh on the premise that Limerick was the solution.
@Micheal S. O’ Ceilleachair: Incompetence more like.
@wormtubes: lads, they have to get their Bonus’s and Golden Handshakes , plus Top ups, from somewhere.!!
No doubt Simon will blame people for getting sick.
Not to worry, Enda said he will end it
Good old Simon has done nothing in Health just sound bites here and there diverting attention away from the problem the whole time.
“Prevention is worth a pound of cure.” We live in an unhealthy culture, from the drink, to the battered sausage at the chipper. Trolls will mock and make jokes in their comments, but we need a sea shift to a ‘wellness’ culture. Starting with our children in school, throughout every level of society, a culture of keeping well is needed. This isn’t a quick fix to a broken system. Neither repairs to the HSE, nor a generational shift to a wellness culture is likely to happen soon. But the ever full pipeline into the emergency department must be reduced and effciencies to our chronicly mismanaged HSE put in place, using outside help where necessary. If the overcrowding is a crisis then we need to act like it and put a crisis team (and funding) together to improve our national health services.
@John Flood: Absolutely true in many cases people massively underestimate the benefits of not smoking, cutting back on alcohol and having a healthy BMI…., but you can’t beat ageing, cancer and congenital conditions with “wellness” and our health service isn’t equipped to help those people either
None of these worst Hospitals are in the greater Dublin Area
Limerick is an absolute disaster with North Cork ‘ Tipperary ‘ South Galway ‘ Clare funneled into one Hospital
It’s third world stuff outside Dublin
Vote to get these idiots out next election before your the next causality
@Mark Walsh: I unfortunately been to the regionals and while bad Dublin is no better let me tell you that . Beaumont is a hole of a hospital the emergency department is like a nightclub over crowded to the point how the he’ll can they even move around or give affective treatments
@Mark Walsh: It is not third world stuff. You’ve just insulted the thousands of front line staff who do great work as well as people unfortunate enough to live in “third world“ countries.
@Philip Kavanagh:
Don’t be such a knob
I did t insult any frontline staff
i was hospitalised 5 times in 2019 for a total of 36 days in all , in that time i actually only got a bed on a ward once and that was only for 4 hours before being discharged with pleurisy , the hospital said id have better chance of recovery at home than in hospital because of the chance of secondary infections due to overcrowding on the wards and corridors , instead they arranged for a nurse to come out to administer i.v antibiotics in my home i had already spent 4 days on a trolley at that point , directly in line with the corridor that linked to the entrance for a&e ambulance admissions , the doors were also used by visitors as a short cut exit to the car parks and by patients wanting to go for a smoke this meant that the doors were constantly being opened and the draught and cold coming up the corridor – there was only one cotton sheet per trolley available ,blankets or sleeping bags had to be brought in by relatives , there were no pillows available so you rolled up your coat or a jumper and used that instead . at meal times some patients had to wait until others had finished their meals because there was not enough cutlery to go around , by the time we we got our meal it was almost stone cold – not that it was that great to begin with ! thats the state our health service is in – its not down to the front line staff or the auxiliary staff ,its down to poor management and too many of them ! far too much waste on committees and boards and talking shops – grandiose paintings and art works in corridors but no blankets for the patients ! how those on the front line cope with the stress and the hours they work is beyond me -
A lot of it is caused by people going to hospital for something that can be sorted with otc meds and doesnt need a hospital visit
@Karl Charlie: No , not really, the people waiting on trolleys are waiting for a hospital bed.
@paul kelly: ye because someone is in there with a cough or a kid with a scratch on the knee parents overreact these days to the slightest thing and our hospitals suffer because of it, id say half them could be sent back to their gp
@Karl Charlie: Karl the most likely reason that a tiny amount of people end up in A & E when they shouldn’t is because GP’s and primary care centres are overstretched to the point of bursting with people waiting a week sometimes for an appointment. However the vast majority of people who subject themselves to hours/days of waiting to be seen in A & E really really need to be there. Blaming the patient is akin to victim blaming and a nonsensical FG line of defence.
@Karl Charlie: it may be partly true for a&e and gp surgeries but not for people on trolleys. Those were admitted to hospital by doctors which means there is a reason and need for them to stay and they are waiting on beds. People can’t just admit themselves nor can they insist on staying in hospital. It is a real issue that cannot be blamed on patients.
@Karl Charlie: Patients with less serious ailments wait a very long time in the waiting room, they dont block up the emergency department, the emergency department is blocked with very sick people who cannot leave because there is no bed on the ward.
@Karl Charlie: The five-year backlog on operations can be fixed by self-medication? Good luck with that notion.
Imagine if even some of the massive overspend on the new children’s hospital was re-allocated to dealing with the beds and services problems? A potential overspend of circa 2 billion (2,000 million!!) would go such a long way to solving the problems of the HSE. Can’t understand why the current CHI project is not scrapped totally and relocated to the M50 for a quarter of the current astonomical price! The cronyism in this country is alive and kicking. The CHI will definitely be a coming election issue.
@Stephen O’Kelly: I hope so. Better to fix that now than plough ahead regardless.
Bring on an election..hopefully the public will vote and get rid of these incompetent s
@Marianne: And the alternative is? All parties are committed to the Slaintecare i.e give the dysfunctional HSE more and more power over our health system.
Ireland’s health services and homeless are a embarrassment to the world for a country that could be great it’s no better than a 3rd world country
Don’t forget this is because the majority of our taxes pay bondholders debt back. That’s where you money goes. Don’t forget it
Are people making the connection yet? Voting FG and FF is voting for the continued decimation of public health services…. Incompetence created it and incompetence is continuing to let it run rampant. There is now a viable alternative, but the establishment with the help of the media have instilled an unrealistic fear into the public, so they continue to vote for those that are allowing approx 3,000 inappropriate deaths in our health service every year, not just a one off.
Talking about changing it, won’t change it, voting in an alternative at least, gives a chance of change. Voting in FG and FF is voting for the same old, same old, a done deal in other words… Let the decimation continue…
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