Waiting times for patients in hospital emergency departments who need to be admitted to a hospital bed are getting longer, figures compiled by the Health Service Executive show.
Its latest monthly performance report indicates that overall 46.9 per cent of patients so far this year have had to wait more than 12 hours to be admitted to a bed from a hospital emergency department, once a decision to admit them was made, compared to 43.8 per cent last year.
While emergency admissions this year are "broadly in line with 2008 emergency admission levels", the report says, the average number of admission waits per day has increased substantially by 23 per cent.
Patients waiting longer than 24 hours to be admitted once a decision to admit them was made has increased by 40 per cent and those waiting longer than 12 hours has increased by 39 per cent.
Some of the increase in waiting times is being put down to bed closures and the numbers of beds occupied by patients whose discharge has been delayed because they have nowhere else to go.
Meanwhile the report, which details the position at the end of March, states that a sampling exercise was also carried out across hospitals looking at the length of time patients were waiting for admission from the time they first turned up in an emergency department. It shows only 45 per cent of patients who required admission were admitted within the target time of six hours from their first presentation at the hospital.
Some 15 per cent waited more than 24 hours for admission.
And of those patients who did not require admission 92 per cent were discharged within six hours and 95 per cent within 12 hours.
Among the hospitals named as having longest waiting times to be admitted to a bed after attending the emergency department are Beaumont and Connolly Hospitals in Dublin, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and Naas General Hospital.
While emergency department waiting times are worse than at the same time last year they could be even longer were it not for the fact that the numbers attending hospital emergency departments are down this year.
The report says "both emergency presentations to hospitals and attendances at emergency departments have decreased against the same period last year by 4 per cent and 5 per cent respectively". It says anecdotal reports suggest the decline in numbers turning up at emergency departments is due in part to the increase in the charge for attending emergency departments since January 1st.