AN UNANNOUNCED INSPECTION of University Hospital Limerick carried out in February by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) found that the hospital improved since a previous inspection but that overcrowding was still a consistent issue.

A report on the inspection’s findings released today noted an improvement in the level of nurse staffing levels in the emergency department compared to 2022 findings.

The report also found an increase in the number of consultants in emergency medicine and welcomed a change to consultant work practices to ensure more onsite availability over the working week.

However, the emergency department remained very overcrowded with 72 patients on trolleys and chairs awaiting an inpatient bed, during the inspection on 21 and 22 February.

The report stated:

“This level of overcrowding continued to impact on the privacy and dignity of patients despite the best efforts of staff – albeit a number of the risk issues Hiqa found in 2022 had been addressed.”

Hiqa found the hospital’s emergency department to be partially compliant with three national standards and non-compliant with one national standard assessed on the days of inspection.

The Irish Times’ Health Editor Paul Cullen told RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne that “gross overcrowding” hasn’t gone away.

“It does say there have been some improvements and some reduction in waiting time and improvement in staff numbers. But there’s still a big mismatch between the massive demand for the hospital in the Mid-west and its capacity.”

“The hospital was found to be operating at 105% capacity on the day of inspection.”

In January, a “major internal incident” was announced as UHL became overhwhelmed with patient numbers. 

The downgrading of Ennis Hospital, as well as other similarly sized hospitals in Limerick city and Nenagh, has been highlighted by doctors and health campaigners in the Mid-West as the key factor behind the overcrowding.  

Message from Joe Carey TD pic.twitter.com/uvWAQOH3jK

— Joe Carey TD (@joecareytd) March 6, 2023

Further attention was drawn to overcrowding at UHL when Fine Gael TD Joe Carey Tweeted that he had spent two nights on a trolley there after struggling to breathe due to a lung infection.

The inspection of the emergency department aimed to review and assess the effectiveness of improvements following Hiqa’s prior risk-based inspection in March 2022.

Findings from the inspection for other areas of the hospital were more positive, with eight out of 11 national standards assessed found to be either compliant or substantially compliant.

The hospital is in the process of planning the development of two additional 96-bed blocks to add extra inpatient bed capacity.

The first of these blocks is intended to be opened in late 2024 or early 2025, with the second intended to open in 2027, the report noted.

The report concluded that a plan for the Mid-West region including acute, community and general practice was urgently needed to address the continued overcrowding situation at UHL.