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Many patients were found on trolleys in unsuitable areas, the review also found. File photo.

Eilish O'Regan Twitter Email

A new report claims a large number of hospital patients were found on trolleys in unsuitable areas, including in corridors where it was “sometimes unclear who was providing care” for them.

T he review was carried out over the winter of 2018 and 2019 and has been released under Freedom of Information to Irish Patients’ Association director, Stephen McMahon.

It also found that staff were fully aware of these safety issues, as well as the impact on patient experience.

Staff assured the review that they do their best to always safeguard patient safety.

“However, given the design of many clinical areas and the demands on the staff, this remains a cause for concern,” the report said.

The hospitals visited included Naas, in Kildare, Tallaght in Dublin, the Mater in Dublin, Cork University Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin.

For patients who needed a hospital bed, access “was invariably the cause of delay and overcrowding”.

And while there were issues relating to bed capacity, there was also a lack of early specialist review and poor inpatient flow.

Infection control was another reason for delays in bed access, due to the requirement for single rooms. In some hospitals, up to 20pc of patients waiting for a bed were delayed for this reason.

“While there is a national commitment to provide more bed capacity within the system, the number of beds and increased demand, including higher levels of attendances and admissions, is impacting on the level of performance,” it said.

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“Late-in-the-day discharges and delayed transfers of care are also contributing to high occupancy levels.”

The study also noted that capacity, including staffing numbers, were reduced over weekends.

The review team, which carried out visits over three months, included management expertise from NHS Scotland, the Scottish government and NHS England.

Mr McMahon, a member of the emergency department task force, said it took him 17 months to get access to the report through FOI, which was eventually released by the Department of Health after the HSE turned down the request.

He said it was clear from the report that we need to “look beyond capacity, and critically examine internal elements that impact on poor performance around leadership and governance”.

He also pointed to concerns about lack of clinical leadership.

The release of the report by the Department of Health comes as emergency departments are under severe pressure due to record attendances by patients.

In response to Mr McMahon’s request for release of the report, the HSE said the relevance of the review had significantly diminished.

It added that some of the recommendations had provided an opportunity for learning and had been included in the winter plan.

While some of the underlying challenges such as capacity remained the same, the operational context had changed beyond recognition – to the extent that finalising a report from a review undertaken in 2019 had limited if any material benefit, “particularly given the plans in place to address our current and future challenges”.

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