Dr. Colm Henry:

Absolutely. There are two issues here. First is whether emergency departments, as they are currently configured, are appropriate to the needs of older people who tend to have more chronic illness and who tend to present to emergency departments with a high rate of conversion to admission. Hence, they wait on trolleys. We need to do two things. First, we need to work - as we are doing - on frailty intervention teams, pathfinders and any admission avoidance to try to avoid that experience happening in the first place by putting resources into emergency departments to enable discharge to take place and address needs without the need for a protracted wait on a trolley or wait for admission.

The second thing we need to do, and which we are doing, is to invest heavily in community services for older people. Hence, there are hubs of care which are called the integrated care programmes for older people, ICPOPs. There are 30 of those in the country and 21 have been set up, including in Cork, this winter. They will see same-day referrals from GPs for older people before they get sick enough to have to go to emergency departments. We need to build up the capacity to address the needs of people with more complex needs than what emergency departments are configured to do, which is to deal with single, quick, episodic care that they can turn around quickly. In answer to the Deputy’s question, it is not suitable or acceptable that they would have to wait for hours or longer on trolleys.