The Minister for Health said she “wasn’t pleased” after she saw a recent roster for hospital consultants, as she pledged to have more of them working on site over weekends.
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said she met with HSE boss Bernard Gloucester over recent weeks to set up a plan to roster more consultants and senior decision makers over the weekends.
She said she wants to avoid the scenes of trolley congestion in hospitals across the country during the St Brigid’s Day bank holiday.
She said the issue is not about “work life balances”, but about patient safety and ensuring the management of public services.
Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (PA)
The Fine Gael TD said she regularly tracks hospital trolley figures.
“I can see the lift, I think approximately, forgive me now, but approximately, say this last weekend, from about 160 on Saturday morning to 420 on Monday morning,” she said on Wednesday.
“That may not be exactly right, but that’s about typical for each weekend.
“I’m very focused on a bank holiday coming up at St Patrick’s Day, which, as I said, also coincides with one of the largest public order spikes that we see, based on the CSO data, and to make sure that there is appropriate cover from senior decision makers and their supporting teams in every hospital around the country.
“With that in mind, I have been working with Bernard Gloucester over the last number of weeks to identify what is the plan for rostering consultants and senior decision makers.
“I don’t mean on call, I mean on site. I’ve had sight of some of those rosters, say last week, and I wasn’t pleased.
“But I see a much better set of planned rosters this week for each of the hospitals of their emergency departments. Again, it’s not exactly where you’d want to get to, but it’s certainly an improvement.
“Now let’s see what happens over St Patrick’s Day and the management of the hospitals, because I do recognise there’s two things going on.
“One it’s about the presence of senior decision makers and their supporting teams. It is also about the whole of region approach to getting people out of hospitals. That works very well in some instances and less well in others, and everybody has to be consistent in relation to it.”
The minister said there has been an increase in the number of people working in the healthcare system and that it should be managed in a way that “responds to patients’ needs”.
She added: “This is about patients. It’s not about work life balances. This is about patients and making sure that we are managing our public services generally, to respond to their needs and to their care.”
She said that around 25% of people who attend emergency departments are admitted, while the rest or treated through a range of different routes.
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She said that there was an improvement in the trolley numbers from 2023 to 2024, but that there has been “quite a lot of drift” at the beginning of this year.
The Dun Laoghaire TD made the comments as she launched three Women’s Health Fund projects, aimed at protecting and improving heart health in women who have, or are at risk of, heart failure.
In Ireland, one in four women dies from heart disease or stroke, while heart failure is also a significant health issue impacting approximately 50,000 women every year.
The three projects aim to addresses the disproportionately higher impact of heart failure and cardiovascular disease in women by providing data, developing guidelines and establishing services that will ultimately lead to improvement prevention, treatment and management of heart conditions.
Speaking about the project, the health minister said that women have a different experience when it comes to cardiac care.
“Women have a different experience, they present differently, their symptoms present differently, and that those symptoms have been, in many cases, under-recognised, leading to later diagnoses for women and more difficult outcomes,” she added.
“It’s really important – we have significant funding from the Women’s Health Fund, which is going to foster these projects, in combination of St Michael’s UCD and St Vincent, which I hope will make meaningful step forward for women’s health, particularly women’s cardiovascular health.”