Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

Good. I was anxious to let the Deputy know.

The Minister has made it a priority to unblock access to acute services in our hospitals by improving the patient flow through the system. Access to services is not about bed numbers per se but is about how the bed capacity in a hospital is managed to maximise throughput and provide safe and quality care to patients. This can be seen in the variations in performance in hospitals across the country.

The special delivery unit, SDU, which was established by the Minister in June this year, is focusing on these issues. The SDU is in the process of establishing an infrastructure based on information collection and analysis, hospital by hospital, in order to ascertain what is happening in real time. It provides information tools for hospital managers, including clinical managers, to map and measure bed capacity in their hospitals depending on variations in, for example, the average length of stay of patients. This will allow the Department to begin to embed performance management in the system, to manage bed capacity and to sustain shorter waiting times.

In principle, opening additional beds is not a panacea to resolve the difficulties in the hospitals.

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