Madam, – Noel Whelan's article (Opinion, February 6th) does the public a disservice by uncritically repeating comments made by the Minister for Health, Mary Harney TD, on Today with Pat Kennyon February 3rd.
In her comments about “A&E” department (properly termed emergency department – ED – since 2000) overcrowding, she made four factually incorrect assertions. 1. The Minister suggested ED overcrowding was vastly improved. Sadly, this is not the case and a shameful “record” of 500 patients awaiting inpatient admission was reached on January 20th, 2010. 2. She asserted that the problem is confined to a few hospitals, whereas the problem is spreading and hospitals which didn’t have ED overcrowding now have the problem. Recent examples are Mullingar and Tullamore, the latter in the constituency of the Taoiseach. 3. She suggested ED overcrowding is a feature of all healthcare systems. But this overlooks the fact that it has been eradicated in the NHS since 2005! 4. She contended being on a trolley was not a problem so long as one was being treated. Quite the contrary, there is a large body of international literature which confirms that detention of patients in an ED beyond the time of decision to admit (the reality in ED overcrowding) is associated with additional patient mortality and morbidity.
Were both landmark Australian papers to be extrapolated to the Irish population, this would suggest between 350 and 400 patients are dying needlessly every year as a result of ED overcrowding. This is sufficient a public health issue to require a much greater response than has been the case to date.
Your contributor also states that now more than 90 per cent of those attending EDs are seen, treated and sent home or admitted within six hours, as if this is a Ministerial achievement.
In truth, those who can be sent home are dealt with expeditiously by EDs, but those who require hospital admission do not get admitted in a timely fashion. As access to hospital beds is not in the ED’s gift, it is not surprising that EDs are generally unable to secure a timely hospital bed for a patient.
Mr Whelan’s unashamed trumpeting of the Minister’s achievements by simply restating incorrect assertions certainly doesn’t, to my mind, meet the standards the “newspaper of record” has historically set for itself. – Yours, etc,