HSE to act on ambulance hold-ups

The HSE is to introduce new measures to help deal with the problem of emergency ambulances going out of service due to being held up at hospital emergency departments, according to Health Minister Mary Harney.

She was responding in the Dail to a question from Fine Gael's Dr James Reilly, who asked about a number of ambulances being rendered out of service for several hours at a time while their trolleys are used for patients in emergency departments (EDs).

Dr Reilly said there had been a recent situation at Dublin's Mater Hospital where eight ambulances were detained, and one of these was tried up for more than seven hours. He proposed that cabins be put in place in hospitals to house additional trolleys.

The Minister said on the day in question at the Mater, eight ambulances werebeing held by 8.30pm and by 9.30 pm, four ambulances had been released. By 10.30 pm all ambulances were again available, having been released from the hospital.

She said one ambulance was at the hospital in excess of six hours. The option of storing additional trolleys at hospitals had been considered in the past but not adopted for health and safety reasons.

The Minister added that the HSE is in discussion with the six major Dublin hospitals with a view to identifying safe and effective measures to help minimise the period for which emergency ambulances are held at hospitals after arriving with patients.

The Minister was asked by Dr Reilly to explain why she had been unable to address the A&E issue after six years in the job and why she had reduced rather than increased bed numbers or meaningfully rolled out primary care facilities.

The Minister  replied: "We did not measure anything six years ago, so we did not know how we were doing. Today we know 1.3 million people attend accident and emergency departments and that 94% of them are dealt with within six hours."

The Minister admitted, however, that 54% of people attending EDs who have been cleared for admission must wait more than six hours to be admitted.

"I accept that is too long but we never had targets before. In fact, we started with 24-hour targets which went down to 12-hour targets."

The Minister also admitted that ther have been problems with the Fair Deal nursing home funding scheme, which was expected to free up acute hospital beds and ease pressure on A&Es.

She said nursing home accommodation is processed in two weeks in some parts of the country under the new scheme but in other parts it was taking longer and that was placing an undue burden on Beaumont and the Mater hospitals.

She said there were A&E issues currently in six or seven hospitals around the country, which were now the focus of considerable attention from the HSE.

[Posted: Wed 23/06/2010]