Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 31 March 2022
11. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Health the engagements he has undertaken with staff or management in Navan hospital regarding the future of the emergency department in the hospital; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16021/22]
View answerOvercrowding in hospitals throughout the State is out of control. While this is in part because of the current wave of Omicron infections, it is also significantly out of control because there are not enough resources in the State. Overcrowding is not new. Indeed, there has been overcrowding in our hospitals for the past 15 years. Last September, the Minister announced that he wanted to gut hospital capacity even further by closing the emergency department in Navan hospital. Will he drop this plan?
I will answer the Deputy's question specific to Navan in a moment. I must first address the statement he made. It is manifestly and verifiably false to say that we are gutting hospital capacity. If the Deputy was being honest, he would know that is a preposterous and verifiably false statement. The reality-----
There were 22,000 beds-----
I did not interrupt the Deputy. With the greatest of respect, the record will show that while there is a huge amount more to be done, over the past two years more beds, more clinicians and more diagnostics have been added to the hospital system than in any year on record. They are verifiable facts. It is unhelpful for the Deputy to make statements that this Government, or indeed any Government, is gutting the hospital system.
I will now speak directly to the very important point raised by him regarding Navan hospital. I am acutely aware that any considerations of changes to health services can cause legitimate and real worry for the populations who are served by those hospitals and for the workforces involved. Any consideration of changes must ensure that we have patient safety and high-quality services at the heart of them such that patients can access the best possible services when they need them, including when they are critically ill and when they find they have to attend a minor injury unit or an emergency department.
The view of the HSE and the most senior clinicians in the area is that the changes to services in Navan hospital are needed for one reason, namely, to support the safe delivery of care on a sustainable basis. This is in line with the smaller hospitals framework. That is not my opinion; that is the opinion of the senior clinicians charged with keeping people safe. As the Deputy will be aware, I instructed the HSE to pause in the planning of these changes to commence an engagement process with the Deputy and other elected representatives and the community. My understanding is that we will be having that session very shortly.
Anybody can point to a year or two and claim increases in those years. Twenty years ago, there were 22,000 hospital beds in this State; today, there are only 14,000. The Minister should do the maths. Ten years ago, it was stated that there was need for 500 ICU beds in this State; today, there are only 300. We have one of the lowest rates in the OECD. The Minister cannot hide and talk around that issue.
One of the reasons the Government has put forward for the closure of the emergency department in Navan hospital is the threat of an adverse incident. I contacted the national incident management system. Its staff showed that in five years there has been an increase from 79,000 to 105,000 in adverse incidents in the hospital system. There has been a 37% increase. I asked which hospitals were suffering most and was told they could not answer that question because they did not want to create a league table of hospitals, but they did tell me which hospital groups are suffering most from adverse incidents. The RCSI Hospital Group had a 47% increase in adverse incidents in that timescale. The Government is looking to close a hospital and an emergency department in the Ireland East Hospital Group and to push it towards the RCSI group. How is that safe?
As I said, and as the Deputy will be aware, I personally intervened to stop the process that had been going on. My view is that any consideration like this must involve the local communities, the healthcare professionals and those elected by the local communities to represent their interests. I would like to acknowledge that the Deputy, as well as other elected representatives for the area, have submitted very detailed questions. The HSE has pored over them and provided very detailed responses. I now want to sit down with the Deputy, all the other elected representatives and the senior clinicians in the area to go through all of these very legitimate questions such as, "Has there been sufficient investment in Navan hospital?", "Are the bypass protocols that are in place working?", "Has there been sufficient investment in the other hospitals where people may go?" and "When we are told that there will be more clinical activity in Navan, what exactly is it that is being proposed?"
There were 105,000 adverse incidents in the hospital system last year. This means people were misdiagnosed, mistreated and given the wrong medication. It means people died or were disabled by those actions and that people are extra sick because of the misactions of the HSE. Which one of the Minister's extremely well-paid staff is responsible for this increase? Is there any accountability? I spoke to senior clinicians in the RCSI Hospital Group. They told me that the closure of Navan hospital emergency department will increase the number of adverse incidents in the group. The excuse for adverse incidents being a reason to close the emergency department is wrong. I ask the Minister to review the decision, to not gut hospital capacity during this time of crisis, to maintain the emergency department in Navan hospital and to invest to make it safer.
There is a question that the Deputy and I, as elected representatives, have to answer. If the Deputy and I, and all of us present, are being told not in private conversations where maybe we can or cannot quote directly and name individuals but on the record by the senior doctors that we need to do X, Y and Z-----
We are being told different.
Okay, but if we are being told in open session by named individuals whom we can hold to account that changes need to be made to the healthcare system, be that investment in the National Ambulance Service, in mental health services, in minor injury units or in more care, to protect the lives of the people we represent, then what do we do? This is a really important issue for Navan hospital and the communities. I am proposing that we all get together with the doctors, who have to put their names and reputations out there, and put the questions to them directly and to inform them of what we have been advised. We need to listen carefully to them and then, as elected representatives, we need to have a conversation around what is the best thing to do for the people of Navan.
The Minister needs to talk to the doctors in the RCSI Hospital Group.
We are way over time.
