Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 23 October 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Sláintecare Implementation Strategy: Discussion

Ms Laura Magahy:

I do not think we are getting the turnaround time within our hospital system. That is another thing we have identified. We know that a large number of beds in hospitals - probably 1,600 beds at present - are suboptimised. That is a large amount of capacity in the system that needs to be looked at. As I said, Mr. Sullivan and I are jointly looking at capacity and immediate access to see what we can do about this. Half of this is due to hospitals not being used optimally and approximately half is due to people who should be in different locations. Deputy Donnelly mentioned respiratory illness. We are outliers in terms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, occupancy in hospitals. We need to put services around those people in the community. That is part of what the integration fund is about, and the enhanced nurse contract will also help us to do that. In alluding to all these key enablers in our presentation, we were trying to say those things will make a difference. The GP contract and chronic disease management will make a difference, but going back to Deputy Donnelly's main point, we are not using optimally what we have. That is my view, having looked at the figures. We need to do more jointly with the HSE. Does Mr. Sullivan wish to come in on that?

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