Dr. Peadar Gilligan:

We have been dealing with the capacity issue for a long time as a country. Our failure to invest in the number of hospital beds, step-down facilities and rehab facilities that we need has a real patient impact on a daily basis. Our ongoing failure to address it in a timely manner will continue that experience of patients sitting in chairs in emergency departments who are sick enough to need to be hospitalised appropriately in a ward bed. The current progress is not rapid enough. Conservatively speaking, I would say 1,000 beds each year for the next five years would get us closer to being in a position to be able to provide care to patients in a timely manner.

It is not just the fact that the patient is receiving care in an inappropriate place. It is that that care is compromised. In other words, the ability to deliver the level of care that the patient requires is just not there because the system does not have the capacity it needs. Patients will say that once they get onto the ward, they feel their issues are being addressed. They are grateful to the staff in emergency departments for doing their best to provide care, but we have to be able to move patients through the system so that we can provide the care that patients need. That necessitates an expensive investment in capacity that has to happen. We need that roadmap now.