Twenty per cent of patients at Tallaght Hospital wait more than six hours for a bed after being admitted through casualty, its chief executive said yesterday.
Mr Michael Lyons rejected a claim by Prof Gerald Tomkin in a letter in yesterday's Irish Times that 30 per cent of patients waited more than 12 hours for a bed. The proportion waiting more than 12 hours is below 10 per cent, he said.
A private wing with 70 beds will open in the autumn, which will free 56 beds in the main hospital, Mr Lyons said. The hospital has proposed to the Eastern Regional Health Authority that these beds be used for chronic patients awaiting transfer to more suitable facilities and for patients treated as part of the waiting lists initiative.
The hospital hopes to cut the waiting list by 35 per cent this year, Mr Lyons said. Figures published at the end of March showed that there were 1,705 people on the Tallaght waiting list.
In his letter to The Irish Times, Prof Tomkin said it had been decided in January that only patients with malignant disease or elective orthopaedic patients could be admitted to the hospital without going through casualty.
Mr Finbarr Fitzpatrick, secretary-general of the Irish Hospital Consultants' Association, said a key difficulty at Tallaght was that it opened in 1998 with up to 60 fewer beds than its constituent hospitals (the Meath, Adelaide and Harcourt Street Children's Hospital) had in the city centre.
email: pomorain@irish-times.ie weblink: www.amnch.ie (Tallaght Hospital website)