CORK UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL has reached an overcrowding record with 90 patients without a bed today, according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO). 

Across the country, there is a total of 635 patients without a bed in hospitals today. 

The top five most overcrowded hospitals in the country include:

• University Hospital Limerick – 99 patients
• Cork University Hospital – 90 patients
• Tallaght University Hospital – 42 patients
• St Vincent’s University Hospital – 41 patients
• Letterkenny University Hospital – 41 patients

“Today we have seen yet another overcrowding record broken in Cork University Hospital with over 90 patients without a bed across the emergency department and other wards in the hospital. This is completely unacceptable,” INMO assistant director for industrial relations for the southern region Colm Porter said. 

“Our members in CUH are under constant significant pressure that is showing no signs of abating as the situation continues to get worse in their workplace,” Porter said. 

“As the union representing nurses working across the hospital we continue to raise health and safety concerns with hospital management on a near daily basis,” he said. 

Porter claimed that “there has been no real or meaningful plan to support the CUH Emergency Department and its surrounds when it comes to increasing bed capacity since the last time an overcrowding record was reached there in September 2022″.

“Urgent engagement is required to ensure that discharge facilities are available in the community,” he said. 

“It is clear that there must be a laser-like focus from both the South/South-West Hospital Group itself and the HSE nationally to tackling the scale of overcrowding in Cork University Hospital.”

A spokesperson for the hospital said “CUH wishes to apologise to all patients who continue to be affected by long waiting periods at the hospital’s Emergency Department”.

“The hospital has a long-standing challenge with acute inpatient bed capacity on site. This unfortunately has resulted in a large number of patients having to endure lengthy waiting times in the Emergency Department awaiting admission,” the spokesperson said. 

“Staff work very hard to provide ongoing safe care to all patients who await admission. CUH is working with HSE colleagues regionally and nationally to address this.”