Mr. Tony Canavan:

Thankfully, the situation in Galway has improved slightly today relative to yesterday but I would agree with Mr. McCallion that as long as there is a patient waiting on a trolley for admission to any one of our hospitals, that remains a significant concern. In the shorter term, we have taken a number of measures that have contributed to the improved position we have seen in the last six months, in particular across Galway. Those measures have included trying to improve the process flow within the hospital itself. For example, we have opened a transition area within the emergency department, which has enabled us to allow more appropriate and comfortable accommodation for patients while they are awaiting admission to a ward bed. We have also started a process of cohorting patients on the ward. That means that patients with a similar diagnosis are grouped together in the same ward where they receive similar treatment from the nursing and the medical staff on that ward. That may seem like a very basic measure to take but it is really important in ensuring the care provided to patients is done by the right teams and in a very timely way. It reduces the length of stay the patient has within the hospital and improves the outcomes of the patient. We feel it is contributing to the improvement in Galway as well.

In addition to that, we have put in place a number of patient-flow co-ordinators. These are people working within the hospital whose job is to ensure that patients move through the hospital system from the emergency department into the ward and then through the process of discharge back into community more effectively. Part of the role of the patient-flow co-ordinator is to work very closely with colleagues on the community side as well to ensure that as patients are approaching the point where they are ready for discharge, preparations are in place in the home, in long-term care or in other settings, so they can move as seamlessly and as quickly as possible into those settings, thereby moving the flow through the hospital.

Those are all short-term measures and generally fall into the category of us trying to make the best of the existing resources we have. We describe our existing resources in terms of beds, facilities and diagnostic equipment within the hospital structure and our existing staffing levels in the hospitals. However, we are also trying to work towards more medium and longer-term solutions, which will involve building the additional capacity that is also required if we are to address the access issues we see in our emergency departments on a long-term basis.