More than 70,000 people left before completing emergency department treatment

More than 70,000 people did not wait or left before completing their treatment in emergency departments during the first seven months of this year, new figures show. The issue was most prominent at the Mater and St James’s hospitals in Dublin. A further 31,821 waited longer than 24 hours to be admitted or discharged in emergency departments between January and July, the figures show.The data was obtained from the HSE under a parliamentary question, submitted by the chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Health, Pádraig Rice. READ MOREThe Social Democrats TD said he was prompted to raise the issue after speaking to an elderly woman who described overcrowded and chaotic scenes when she brought her husband who had cancer and an infection to a hospital emergency department. Apart from the extraordinary lengths of time people were waiting to be scene, there was also the concern of the pressure hospital staff were facing, he said. The 70,000 people who left before completing their treatment was a symptom of a bigger problem, he told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland. He explained that ‘not completing their treatment’ meant that people left before being admitted to hospital or discharged. These people could still need further treatment, he said. “It is a huge number of people who haven’t gotten the care that they need.”Rice called for further capacity within the health system. “We don’t have enough beds in our hospitals. According to Eurostat, we have the fifth-lowest per capita number of beds and we need to build that up.“The ESRI say we need 300 additional beds per year, just to keep pace with the ageing population and the growing population as well. And last year we fell far short of that with only 196 new beds. So in the first instance we need to build up those beds and then staff them and that’s a crucial issue.”There also needs to be more staff and there was “essentially an embargo on hiring staff”, which had led to huge shortages and huge pressures, he added.“Beyond that we need to build up community services to prevent people going to the hospital in the first place. We have a huge shortage of GPs, particularly in rural areas, commuter areas, and people end up going to emergency departments because they can’t get access to a GP service. People are waiting over two weeks to see a GP,” he said.With GP visits costing up to €70, many people end up going to hospital instead, Rice added. “We have the most expensive GP system in all of Europe,” he said. Sláintecare needs to be implemented with more focus on prevention, early intervention and keeping people at home, the TD said.