THE DECISION TO cancel scheduled care across five hospitals and injury units for an indefinite period is necessary to allow the hospitals to “descalate”.

HSE CEO Bernard Gloster said that “the hospital is completely overheated. There’s a backlog of unscheduled care that has to be dealt with. And it has now got into such a circular space, that all of the normal options that are available to assist are being essentially occupied by patients who require care.”

“The intervention that was made was to focus the entire hospital and community health services of the Midwest for a period of time on urgent care.”

Appointments and operations have been cancelled at UHL, Ennis, Nenagh, St John’s Hospital and Croom Orthopaedic Hospital.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) said that it will have severe knock-on consequences for patient health outcomes and expressed concern about the busier winter months.

They said it “effectively amounts to a dereliction of hospitals across the Mid-West and those who depend upon them”.

“We have all known for years that Limerick has problems, but instead of meeting them creatively, HSE leadership is essentially giving up.

“Responding to a lack of resourcing and capacity by simply cancelling life-enhancing surgery is completely unacceptable and poorly thought-out,” said a spokesperson.

In response to a claim by the IHCA that the measures were being implemented without consultation, Gloster said that “the list of measures and the exemptions of which there are several for this plan, were drawn up by the clinical community in that hospital”.

Conditions in UHL have been under scrutiny since the death of 16-year-old Aoife Johnston at the hospital in 2022, who waited 12 hours to be assessed for suspected sepsis.

An initial report found that overcrowding in the hospital’s emergency department was “endemic” and doctor and nurse staffing levels are “insufficient”.

The HSE has been in possession of the report since July.

Gloster said that he hopes to publish the report in September, with the current review phase expected to be concluded at the end of August.

With reporting from the Press Association.