Doctors in Co Donegal have called for an external inquiry into Letterkenny University Hospital, which they say is close to collapse.
In separate letters to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, consultants at the hospital and local GPs warn the hospital is in crisis and patients attending it are at clinical risk.
In their letter, 78 GPs say they are finding it increasingly difficult to decide on sending patients to the hospital’s emergency department (ED) because of the long wait times “on hard hospital chairs”.
“We have patients who are refusing to attend the emergency department because they would ‘rather take their chances and stay at home’,” they said.
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“We have huge concerns regarding patient safety here and feel like it is an incident waiting to happen. Our patients are at risk of death and we are no longer willing to stand by and watch while little meaningful change takes place.
“The system is broken. We no longer have faith that the current system can be fixed and appropriately managed without outside intervention, support and resources.”
Deteriorating conditions in the hospital’s emergency department and a lack of resources are placing patients at risk, according to the letter.
Waiting times at the ED have deteriorated dramatically since 2020, with only half of patients seen within six hours and more than a quarter waiting more than nine hours. Ambulance waiting times are the longest in the State, the doctors also point out.
“We consider that this hospital is in crisis and rapidly approaching a tipping point beyond which failed recruitment of medical and surgical specialists will lead to a failure of on-call rosters,” a group of 11 consultants say in their letter. “Such a scenario would inevitably lead to service curtailment and raise the possibility of service collapse.”
In a response, the Saolta hospital group, which includes LUH, acknowledged the challenges faced by the hospital but said it was taking “all available steps” to address them. These include a proposal to extend the ED, increased staffing and the addition of 91 more beds by 2030.
