All non-urgent surgeries which were planned to go ahead at University Hospital Limerick on Wednesday have been cancelled due to demand for inpatient beds, the UL Hospitals Group (ULHG) said Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, demand for inpatient beds is such that we have had to cancel all but the most time-critical elective surgery at UHL tomorrow (Wednesday), we apologise to all patients impacted by this decision, who are being contacted directly by hospital staff this afternoon, we will work to ensure these patients are rescheduled at the earliest opportunity,” a ULHG statement read.
The group said elective surgeries at its other hospitals in the midwest region would continue although it advised “our Hospital Management Team (HMT) is keeping the situation under constant review”.
Due to “high numbers of inpatients and extremely high numbers of sick patients presenting at the Emergency Department”, the ULHG asked the public “to consider all available healthcare options, to help them avoid long waits for assessment in the ED”.
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“In the 24 hours between 8am yesterday (Monday) and this morning, a total of 278 people attended the ED, among them significant numbers of children and of frail elderly patients with complex health conditions,” it said.
It urged less acutely unwell patients to first consider local Injury Units, GPs, out-of-hours GP services and pharmacists before attending the ED at UHL, the only 24 hour ED for Limerick City and County, Clare and north Tipperary.
On Tuesday, 97 patients were on trolleys in the Limerick hospital’s Emergency Department and on wards. Yesterday there were 104 on trolleys in the hospital, which requires at least 200 more beds to try to meet demand.
On January 3rd the ULHG declared a “major internal incident” of patient overcrowding at UHL along with unsustainable pressure on its Emergency Department.
Despite the ULHG introducing a range of measures aimed at reducing the trolley crisis at UHL, persistent overcrowding there has continued.
An estimated 10,000 people marched in Limerick City to highlight years of patient overcrowding at the region’s only Model 4 hospital, and to ask the Government to reverse a decision in 2009 whereby all 24-hour Accident and Emergency services in the region were reconfigured to UHL.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to UHL last month the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said reopening emergency departments in the region’s Model 2 hospitals would be “impossible” as it was not the right health model to follow. However, he later told members of the midwest Hospital Campaign group that “nothing is off the table”.