Naas Hospital is one of 22 hospitals nationwide where paramedics are struggling to get patients into emergency departments in the targeted amount of time.
Out of the 26 hospitals nationwide that were examined by the HSE in May, only four of them were meeting the standard patient handover time that the health service set out. There is a 20 minute window in which it is expected that paramedics arrive at the emergency department, hand over their patient, get their trolley back and then take to the road once again to respond to further call-outs. The HSE has set a target for each hospital to have patients handed over in a 20 minute window at least 50% of the time.
Naas Hospital meets that criteria 36.6% of the time, while 67.5% of patients are handed over and dealt with in the space of 30 minutes. Out of 681 call-outs, a total of 17 patients took more than an hour to be properly handed over to the ED at Naas Hospital, which held up the ambulance service from getting back on the road.
ED overcrowding is the reason behind such delays, though Naas Hospital compares quite favourably when it comes to patient handover.
The Emergency Department in Galway Hospital is the worst performing in the country, with just 8% of patients being handed over in the 20 minute window. Conversely, Tallaght Hospital is the best performing hospital nationwide when it comes to patient handovers, with 58% of ambulance services getting their business done in the 20 minute period.
Fianna Fáil TD Bill Kelleher believes that it is neither the ambulance services fault or the hospitals fault when it comes to transferring patients, and he states that many hospitals are experiencing ongoing difficulties in emergency departments due to a lack of resources.
“Of course missing turnaround targets has a knock on effect for the ambulance service as it makes it harder to respond to new call outs in the target time if paramedics are delayed at hospitals.
“Unsurprisingly, many of the hospitals with low turnaround rates also experience overcrowding in their Emergency Departments. The delays in transferring patients are clearly not the fault of the ambulance service. Rather there are symptomatic of the ongoing difficulties in our acute hospitals,” concluded Deputy Kelleher.
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