Drumm and A&E waiting times.

themorrigan

move if necessary not sure of right forum


"The Chief Executive of the Health Service Executive has defended the performance of the country's hospital Emergency Departments.

Professor Brendan Drumm said 94% of patients attending emergency departments are seen, treated and sent home within six hours."


eh? I read this with disbelief - Having spent almost 13 hours in St. James Hospital a/e waiting room with a older relative who earlier seemed to have some sort of stroke and was deemed a "catagory 3" type patient - who was only seen and called in from the waiting room after this apalling amount of hours only to be admitted after waiting another 4 hours for someone to make a decision and then to wait even longer for a bed in the actual hospital - and for us to wait outside in waiting room as they have a NO VISITOR POLICY IN A&E - I cannot believe this MAN had the BALLS to blatently lie about this.

Speaking to the staff on the odd occasion I saw one they tell me that these types of waits are normal, and "getting longer" by the day.
Where is this magic hospital Drumm is talking about because next time no matter where I have to travel to I want to go there.

As I said this was no minor injury. Oh and BTW on another note when I asked if this wait was because of the famous work to rule they told me they were working as normal.

Is this normal? Is this the case with all the A&E departments in this country?

Jessibelle

Not that I've had the misfortune to experience recently. I was of the opinion that in Dublin the A&E's were going to be busy, so expected long waiting times, but we waited equally as long, if not longer in some smaller hospitals beyond the pale recently. Obviously we fall into the 6% that have to wait longer...

opinion guy

Well see its all about how you present the figures.
"94% of patients attending emergency departments are seen, treated and sent home within six hours."
It doesn't say anything about how long they wait before they are seen. What this actually says is 94% are sent home within 6 hours of being seen. Also - how do you define "being seen". Here it means seen by the doctor. It does not mean being seen by the triage nurse.

Welcome to HSE statistics 101.

Ihaveanopinion

Just about the visitor policy

I think it is appropriate to keep unnecessary visitors out of an A&E Dept- within reason of course. Parents with kids ok but much beyond that tends to clutter an already cluttered department.

Most A&E Depts are piled deep with patients anyway so if you add one visitor per person it doubles the number of people in the department.

imported_guy

themorrigan wrote: »

move if necessary not sure of right forum


"The Chief Executive of the Health Service Executive has defended the performance of the country's hospital Emergency Departments.

Professor Brendan Drumm said 94% of patients attending emergency departments are seen, treated and sent home within six hours."


eh? I read this with disbelief - Having spent almost 13 hours in St. James Hospital a/e waiting room with a older relative who earlier seemed to have some sort of stroke and was deemed a "catagory 3" type patient - who was only seen and called in from the waiting room after this apalling amount of hours only to be admitted after waiting another 4 hours for someone to make a decision and then to wait even longer for a bed in the actual hospital - and for us to wait outside in waiting room as they have a NO VISITOR POLICY IN A&E - I cannot believe this MAN had the BALLS to blatently lie about this.

Speaking to the staff on the odd occasion I saw one they tell me that these types of waits are normal, and "getting longer" by the day.
Where is this magic hospital Drumm is talking about because next time no matter where I have to travel to I want to go there.

As I said this was no minor injury. Oh and BTW on another note when I asked if this wait was because of the famous work to rule they told me they were working as normal.

Is this normal? Is this the case with all the A&E departments in this country?

well St. James Hospital is a public hospital.....

productivity in public hospitals is shiete in general... in private hospitals OTs run like conveyor belts, as soon as an operation is finished the room is prepped for the next one, but often in public hospitals there is a long downtime between operations etc. this isnt all because of the HSE though, alot of it has to do with the administration of the hospital, but still HSE needs to cop on and realise this otherwise public hospitals will never be as good(as in productive) as private ones.

DrIndy

Imported_guy - you have a skewed opinion on how the health service works and what you just posted is far from the truth.

I worked ED in ireland - ALL my patients were either referred for admission or discharge within 2 hours, most within 1 hour. HOWEVER - they sat in the waiting room 6-16 hours for me to see them.

This is the cannibalisation of statistics. No patient ever waited more than 4 hours after I saw them - but they in fact waited nearly 24 hours to be discharged - there is a difference.

imported_guy

DrIndy wrote: »

Imported_guy - you have a skewed opinion on how the health service works and what you just posted is far from the truth.

I worked ED in ireland - ALL my patients were either referred for admission or discharge within 2 hours, most within 1 hour. HOWEVER - they sat in the waiting room 6-16 hours for me to see them.

This is the cannibalisation of statistics. No patient ever waited more than 4 hours after I saw them - but they in fact waited nearly 24 hours to be discharged - there is a difference.

emm... could you quote the part that you disagree with? i pretty much agree with all that you said... waiting times are pretty long, long waiting time is just a measure of poor productivity..... i was just pointing out its not just the A&E its pretty much everything, in some places knee/hip replacement waiting list runs into years and not months, if you compare how many operations take place in CUH and compare it with a private hospital like bons in cork, you will know what im talking about.

AmcD

There is one huge difference between public and private hospitals. Private hospitals don't have messy emergency departments cluttering up their admissions. Public hospitals with emergency departments frequently have to cancel elective surgical work because the beds are needed by patients coming in through A+E.
Public hospitals without emergency departments can be every bit as streamlined as the private ones. In the orthopaedic world, you have Cappagh Hospital in Finglas and Croom hospital in Limerick. The theatres in these hospitals work extremely efficiently because there are no emergency/trauma patients. In Cappagh hospital it is actually the porters who do a good deal of set up between cases. The orthopods just step away from one patient and scrub in straight away for the next one. (Have inside info here as married to orthopod).

Ihaveanopinion

imported_guy wrote: »

emm... could you quote the part that you disagree with? i pretty much agree with all that you said... waiting times are pretty long, long waiting time is just a measure of poor productivity..... i was just pointing out its not just the A&E its pretty much everything, in some places knee/hip replacement waiting list runs into years and not months, if you compare how many operations take place in CUH and compare it with a private hospital like bons in cork, you will know what im talking about.

Cork is a slightly different situation as they have only recently appointed two surgeons to perform hip & knee replacements. Hence the difference between the public and the private..... you will find the waiting times dropping significantly in Cork shortly

In most elective orthopaedic unit in the country, waiting lists are runing at about six months for major joint replacement