Written answers

Thursday, 2 March 2017

Department of Health

Hospital Accommodation Provision

Photo of David CullinaneDavid Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

202. To ask the Minister for Health his plans to open prefabs at acute hospitals to ease emergency room pressures; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10888/17]

Photo of Simon HarrisSimon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy may be aware, the Winter Initiative Plan which the HSE launched in September last year, provided €40 million of additional funding for winter preparedness and to manage the expected surge in demand for hospital care in an integrated way across Primary, Acute and Social Care.

As part of this the HSE put in place a National Framework for the provision of temporary alternative accommodation, as just one part of a broad range of measures undertaken to alleviate pressure on our Emergency Departments. Under the Framework, the HSE has advised that consideration will be given to managed temporary patient accommodation solutions which are staffed. The next stage will be for a mini-tender to be conducted to request proposals in relation to temporary patient accommodation solutions.

This year’s gross budget for the Health Sector is in excess of €14 billion and represents an increase of almost half a billion compared to the 2016 allocation. The additional funding secured will continue to ease the pressure on the Health Service to provide the optimum level of safe services for patients within the budgetary limits. In addition to increasing capacity by providing additional financial resources to the public health system over the last two years, this Government has also demonstrated its commitment to increasing bed capacity in the public hospital system. Under the Winter Initiative, funding has been provided to open around 100 extra acute beds this year; of these 90 are already open.

So far, the Winter Initiative has also delivered a reduction in delayed discharges nationally from a high of 659 earlier in 2016 to 517 as of this week, freeing up hospitals beds to alleviate ED pressures, aids and appliances to over 4,250 patients, as well as almost 1,050 additional home care packages and 615 additional transitional care beds approvals, all enabling patients to be discharged from hospital sooner.

There is a commitment in the Programme for a Partnership Government regarding the conduct of a bed capacity review in the public health system. This review is already under way. It will be comprehensive with a wider scope than previous reviews, which focused on bed capacity in acute hospitals only.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.