‘Serious issues’ with how UHL operates

Taoiseach Simon Harris has said there are “serious issues” in relation to how University Hospital Limerick (UHL) operates, particularly given the increase in staffing in recent years.

He told the Dáil that the number of doctors working in UHL had recently increased from 26 to 47 and there had also been additional nurse recruitment.

He said it was worth noting that Emergency Departments were exempt from the general recruitment ban in the health service.

He was replying to Social Democrats Health Spokesperson Róisín Shortall, who requested that the former Barrington Hospital site, which on sale €12.5m, should be acquired by the State.

She said UHL was the most overcrowded hospital in the country and last month had twice as many patients on trollies as the next on the list, Cork University Hospital.

Deputy Shortall has said the Minister for Health had conceded there is chronic overcrowding UHL which means “… that the hospital is unsafe.”

In reply, the Taoiseach said he would examine the Barrington Hospital site and revert to Deputy Shortall.

He said a new block should open next year which would have 71 additional beds and 25 beds replacing those on other wards.

Deputy Shortall said matters could be improved if another hospital, part of the UHL group, was given the designation of model 3 hospital which would mean it could do some Emergency Department work.

In December 2022, 16-year-old Aoife Johnston died after presenting at UHL’s emergency department with suspected sepsis and facing a lengthy wait for treatment.

A verdict of medical misadventure was returned last week at the inquest into her death.

The Taoiseach welcomed a decision by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to send a support team to UHL in an attempt to ease overcrowding in the midwest region.

The HSE said the team would begin its work “immediately and over the next four weeks to help devise a number of actions designed in particular to ease overcrowding and pressures in the Emergency Department at University Hospital Limerick”.

Mr Harris said that while he had significant concerns about the hospital in Limerick, he hoped good practices could now be embedded there.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the trolley crisis was now a year-round emergency, with UHL the worst hit.

She said the recruitment embargo was posing major difficulties around the delivery of services in Co Limerick and in other parts of the health service.

“Your recruitment embargo is layering crisis upon crisis,” she said, adding that it was also adversely affecting things like adolescent healthcare and dental services.

Additional reporting by Mícheál Lehane