University Hospital Limerick needs an additional 205 beds to function, management have said, following a report that described their emergency department as “grossly overcrowded”. 

Inspectors from the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) said that the emergency department was failing to provide patients with an appropriate standard of care and dignity, detailing how far too many patients are kept waiting on trolleys for long periods of time.

“The emergency department is designed to hold 49 patients; there were an additional 50 patients on trolleys on the day [of the inspection],” Seán Egan, Director of Healthcare Regulation with HIQA, explained to The Hard Shoulder. 

“And there were 60 patients in the emergency department who had received their treatment and were waiting to be admitted to the hospital on that day.” 

One patient had been waiting close to five days without a bed and Mr Egan said it was a stark example of the “deficit that exists between capacity within the hospital and the demand that is there to treat patients with serious conditions.” 

Professor Brian Lenihan, Chief Clinical Director of UHL, told Newstalk that to receive the highest standard of care a patient should be treated in a bed and “unfortunately we simply do not have that inpatient bed capacity to deal with the demand that is presenting to our emergency department.” 

Professor Lenihan said in 2009 it was recommended that UHL have 600 beds; currently it has 530, meaning it is still 70 beds short of a level recommended more than a decade ago. 

Since then demand has grown even further and Professor Lenihan added, “Based on the most recent bed capacity review we need an additional 205 beds here in the midwest.”

General views of University Hospital Limerick in December 2020. Picture by: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Funding has been approved for the hospital to build a 96 bed block - although 48 of the beds will be replacing older beds in their current stock. 

“The construction on that block should start this summer but it will take approximately two years to complete that,” he continued. 

“That will go a small way to relieving the congestion issues.” 

Maurice Quinlivan, Sinn Féin TD for Limerick, described the situation at UHL as an “ongoing crisis” and said that constituents contact him everyday with complaints about its performance.

Main image: General views of University Hospital Limerick in December 2020. Picture by: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo