THE HEALTH Information and Quality Authority has been urged to conduct an investigation into the safety of services at every overcrowded hospital emergency department in the State, not just at Dublin’s Tallaght hospital.
Dr John McInerney, spokesman for the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine, said yesterday the authority’s announcement that it is to investigate the quality and safety of services provided to patients requiring acute admission and receiving care in the emergency department of Tallaght hospital was welcome, but all similarly overcrowded emergency departments should also be examined. “It’s long overdue,” he said.
At a board meeting on Friday the authority decided to instigate the investigation into services at Tallaght.
The terms of reference and membership of the investigation team will be published when finalised in coming days.
The authority is understood to have been in correspondence with the hospital for well over a year about safety and risk issues, as well as lack of governance in some areas. It said it had “previously sought assurances in relation to how the board and executive of the hospital are governing and managing these risks”.
This is the fifth such investigation by the authority. It previously investigated the safety of services at Mallow and Ennis hospitals, and conducted lengthy investigations into the misdiagnosis of two cancer patients – Rebecca O’Malley and a woman known only as Patient A. This is the first time it has conducted a statutory investigation into the process of care once a patient arrives at a hospital emergency department.
Its decision to conduct the investigation came a day after the Dublin county coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty said Tallaght hospital sounded like a “very dangerous” place.
His comments came after presiding over an inquest into the death of Thomas Walsh (65) of Elmcastle Park, Kilnamanagh, Tallaght, who died at the hospital on March 2nd last while “in a virtual ward” or corridor awaiting a bed.
Dr James Gray, a consultant in emergency medicine at the hospital, told the inquest he and his colleagues had complained about the conditions to the quality authority, the Human Rights Commission, the Health Service Executive and the Medical Council, but overcrowding was still continuing.
The hospital, in a statement, said it would fully co-operate with the investigation. It also reiterated what its acting chief executive John O’Connell told Thursday’s inquest – that the hospital was funded to look after 350,000 people but in reality looked after 500,000, making it “the busiest hospital in the country”.
It said it wanted to reassure patients and the local community that patient safety was, and always would be, its highest priority.
Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patients Association and a member of the hospital’s transitional board said he had every confidence the investigation would make a contribution to safer care in the hospital’s emergency department, as well as in some others around the country.
Dr McInerney said it was bound to cause harm to patients if they were left on virtual wards. He said a recent study in the British Medical Journalshowed overcrowding wasn't just harmful for those on trolleys and chairs waiting for beds, but also increased the risks for those arriving for assessment at the emergency department.