Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to address the House on the issues raised by Deputy Dooley. The Minister for Health wishes to acknowledge the distress that overcrowded accident and emergency departments cause to patients, their families and the front-line staff working in challenging conditions in hospitals all across the country. The number of patients attending accident and emergency departments continues to increase year-on-year. For the first ten months of 2019, the number of patients attending hospital accident and emergency departments increased by 2.7% and the number of admissions to accident and emergency departments has increased by 0.9% compared to the same period last year. The emergency department at UHL, is one of the busiest in the country. As such, the hospital and the CHO were identified as one of the nine focus sites requiring additional investment, focus and support last winter.

According to HSE TrolleyGAR data, there was a 16% increase in patients waiting on trolleys year-to-date in UHL emergency department in October 2019 compared with the same period last year. In October, however, 883 patients were counted on trolleys in UHL, which was a 1.6% decrease compared with the previous month. It is acknowledged that this figure is unacceptably high and the HSE is actively working with the UL hospital group to ease congestion in UHL, with a focus on facilitating transfers to Level 2 hospitals, assistance from rehabilitation units and CHO services, and prioritisation of diagnostics to aid inpatient discharges. The HSE winter plan was launched on Thursday, 14 November in preparation for the anticipated increase in demand over the winter period.

The Government has allocated an additional €26 million to fund the implementation of the winter plan. Each winter action team has set out a range of initiatives it will undertake within its area to implement the plan. The integrated winter plan for University Hospital Limerick will be delivered by winter action team 3. The initiatives for winter action team 3 include additional home support hours to facilitate early hospital-to-community transfers, additional aids and appliances to facilitate early hospital discharge and emergency department avoidance, mobile doctor service units to manage increased demand for home visits and to facilitate emergency department avoidance, a low-level domiciliary rehab team in Limerick city to facilitate early discharge and emergency department avoidance, additional triage nursing support in Shannondoc to support emergency department avoidance, an additional registrar in UHL to help in addressing workflow and improving patient experience times and additional health care assistant supports in University Hospital Limerick to provide staffing at ward level to support additional surge patients.

A capital budget of €19.5 million has been approved for the provision of a modular 60-bed inpatient ward block at University Hospital Limerick, with funding of an additional €10 million allocated in 2019. The HSE has advised that the enabling works are complete and the main contractor has commenced work. It is anticipated that the construction will be completed in 2020. This important project will go some way towards addressing the acknowledged lack of bed capacity in the region. It is recognised that there is a deficit in diagnostic capacity at University Hospital Limerick. A capital development proposal for an extension of the radiology department at University Hospital Limerick to include a second MRI unit has been prioritised by the HSE to progress to design stage in 2020. In the interim, the University of Limerick Hospitals Group has tendered for a modular MRI managed service. The National Treatment Purchase Fund will work with the HSE to fund the activity associated with the MRI scanner as part of the agreed extension in the fund's support for hospital emergency departments for diagnostics at the end of the year.

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