The Emergency Department at the region’s main hospital remains extrememly busy heading into the bank holiday weekend.
The latest figures from the INMO show there were 101 admitted patients waiting for beds at University Hospital Limerick during morning rounds, 50 of those in the ED.
It comes as the HSE is warning of an expected spike in demand in hospitals across the country this St Patrick’s Weekend.
The health service is urging people to consider all other care options before going to an ED in order to protect them for patients who need urgent and emergency care.
Statement from the UL Hospitals Group:
Heading into the long weekend of national holiday celebrations, all sites across UL Hospitals Group remain very busy due to high numbers of inpatients and continued high presentations of very sick patients at the Emergency Department (ED) in University Hospital Limerick (UHL).
As we continue to balance this demand on emergency healthcare with the needs of very sick inpatients while safely maintaining time-critical and other elective surgical activity, we’re asking the public to continue availing of all healthcare options in order to avoid inevitably long waits at the ED.
A total of 230 people attended the ED in the 24 hours from 8am Wednesday, down by 17% from the high of 278 on Monday. Nevertheless, UHL and all sites remain in an escalated state, due to high acuity of significant numbers of inpatients, including many children and frail, elderly patients with complex care needs.
Unfortunately, there have had to be some cancellations of less urgent day cases in UHL so that the most time-critical cases can proceed safely today and across the weekend. Decisions like these are the most difficult for any hospital to make, but they are necessary in the interests of patient safety, and we apologise to impacted patients and their families and loved ones.
All patients affected have been contacted directly by hospital staff, and they will be rescheduled for their procedures at the earliest possible opportunity. Our elective surgery lists will remain under continual review by clinicians and the Hospital Management Team over the coming days.
We continue working to the escalation framework across all our sites to create surge capacity and maximise the numbers of inpatient beds available on our sites. Additional ward rounding is ongoing so that appropriate patients can be discharged or transferred to Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s Hospital. We continue to work with our colleagues in HSE Mid West Community Healthcare in order to further expedite suitable discharges home or to community care beds.
In common with all hospitals across the country facing into this busy holiday weekend, we have requested that consultants and senior clinical decision makers are available over the weekend in order to support discharge and movement of patients.
With the ED still very busy, anyone presenting to department today with a less than urgent condition is going to face a lengthy wait. We urge the public to consider all available healthcare alternatives to ED.
Less acutely unwell patients are asked to first consider our Injury Units, GPs, out-of-hours GP services and pharmacists before attending ED.
Injury Units in Ennis, Nenagh and St John’s are operating as normal. Opening hours for Ennis and Nenagh Injury Units are 8am -8pm and St John’s Injury Unit 8am-7pm. For full contacts for the units, and the services available there, please see: https://www2.hse.ie/services/injury-units/
