The HSE’s CEO has reported to the annual general meeting of the Irish Medical Organisation, held in Killarney, considerable progress has taken place in reducing trolley numbers, despite a sharp rise in demand. Emergency departments nationwide have experienced a 12% increase in demand, compared to the year’s first quarter, while trolley numbers dropped by 10%. However, he conceded that continued issues persist in specific places, with University Hospital Limerick being a notable case.
Out of 29 daily monitored hospitals for trolley numbers and waiting times, five of them accounted for over half of the entire figure; Limerick had the most significant contribution. Additional beds are set to be available at UHL in roughly three months and coupled with hospital management measures, improvements are foreseen.
Furthermore, the CEO envisages positive developments in the challenging conditions of the emergency department, subjected to the extension of working hours of acute medical assessment units, along with an increased output from full-time public consultants. Thus far, the attempts to improve the situation have been hampered by lower acceptance of new public-only contracts by consultants, requiring more flexibility if significant progress is to be anticipated.
Despite the call to end the HSE’s current hiring freeze by both the consultants and Non-Consultant Hospital Doctors at the convention, the CEO abstained from forecasting the period it would continue.
The spokesman stated that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is currently determining the requisite personnel numbers it will need on completion of its organisational restructuring. After these calculations are made, new hiring processes will be more predictable and transparent.
The plan for the future, he mentioned, is to work with a budgeted workforce and would have to conform to that financial structure. When they hit that cap, a recruitment suspension would necessarily follow.
The spokesperson is collaborating with the Minister, the secretary general of the department, and the Department of Public Expenditure to define how to articulate this clearly to all involved parties. He is also seeking to clarify what the workforce outlook will look like moving forward.
He added that the clarity in this process would allow for recruitment to be understood more readily, moving away from the current binary system of complete pause or continuation.
Meanwhile, he noted that there have been certain exceptions to the recruitment freeze and the headcount has actually increased in the first couple of months of this year.