55 waiting for beds in Drogheda Hospital last week

There were a total 55 people waiting for a bed in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda over the course of last week, as hospital staff dealt with another week of overcrowding.

While the figure is a decrease from the 83 patients recorded over the course of  four working days in the week before, the hospital has still been dealing with an ambulance bypass protocol which has seen critically ill and unstable patients from Meath bypassing Navan Hospital and being brought to Drogheda.

Back in December seventeen consultants at Drogheda Hospital wrote to the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly warning that "patients may die" if the protocol went ahead, due to a lack of resources at the hospital and highlighted staffing shortfalls claiming that there was a deficit in medical staffing of 16 doctors.

Last week Meath TD Peadar Tóibín claimed that some patients from Meath were being brought by ambulance to Drogheda to be triaged and then sent back to Navan A&E for treatment by ambulance or by taxi. 

“If they are being brought by taxi a medical professional has to accompany them and then that medical professional is travelling back to Drogheda by taxi. 

“What should be a single patient journey to A&E now takes three individual journeys.”

"If you were to design the most inefficient and wasteful pathways for a patient to get to an A&E this would be it.”

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Spokesperson for the Safeguard Drogheda A&E campaign group Michael O’Dowd said that patients were experiencing long delays to get admitted to the hospital.

“Particularly before Christmas there was a huge issue with paediatric A&E, but even since then there have been a lot of complaints about delays to get a hospital bed and get admission into the hospital itself.

“The general feeling is that when you get into the hospital the treatment is excellent but there's [ a lot of] pressure being put on staff.” 

He further said that lack of capacity had a lot to do with the crisis:

“There were 120,000 people on trollies last year which  is equivalent to the population of County Louth.  931 people on trollies on one day at the start of the year. In the last week, according to the HSE, 1,800 patients waited over 24 hours in emergency departments. 

“The crisis in A&Es is leading to excess deaths and significantly damaged health of people right around the country. Its estimated to be in the region of 360 deaths a year”.

“This is all as a direct result of years of cuts to staff, hospital beds and A&Es at a time there has been significant population increase. The Health Service is designed for a population of 3.5 million people not 5.5 million people that we have now. 

“We don’t have the hospital beds, the ICU beds or the staff for the population. We have 6,000 less hospital beds than in 2008, 200 too few ICU beds, 30% too few GPs. There are 700 missing consultants in the health system. In 15 Years the government closed eight A&Es.”

On 21st January Safeguard Drogheda A&E will join other hospital campaign groups in a national day of action that will see protests outside hospitals around the country calling for increased capacity and funding.

“We urge people to join us outside Our lady of Lourdes Hospital on January 21st at 1pm,” Mr O’Dowd concluded.