Nearly 45,000 hospital appointments cancelled over two-month period
Patients Picture: Limerick's Jervis/press Corridors On Mid Regional In 22 In Hospital Dooradoyle Are Trolleys Emma Western Waiting At
The country's hospitals saw record levels of in-patient cancellations over the winter months as the country's health system struggled with an emergency department crisis.
Overall, close to 45,000 inpatient appointments were cancelled across December and January amidst the worst overcrowding crisis ever seen in Irish hospitals, with fears now expressed that this backlog is going to continue to cause issues in the coming months.
Newly released figures show that in December, 18,998 procedures were cancelled. This includes 3,952 for children, including 671 surgeries, day appointments, and in-patient admissions.
This figure set a new record for cancellations since the data began to be collected in April of 2022.
However, December's record was immediately broken, with some 25,850 cancellations recorded in the month of January, an increase of over 6,000.
Of those, 3,602 were for surgeries day appointments or inpatient admissions, which 3,703 St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin.
In total across the two months, as trolley figures hit record highs, there were 44,848 canceled appointments within the Irish health system. Of those, 5,387 came at Cork University Hospital.
The mass cancellations came as the country's hospitals struggled with record numbers of patients left languishing on trolleys without beds as the health system was badly impacted by the presence of flu, RSV, and covid-19.
The figures were released to Sinn Féin's health spokesperson David Cullinane, who said that the winter surge had been to blame.
“Nearly 45,000 hospital cancellations for the months of December and January is a direct consequence of the overcrowding and lack of capacity to deal with a winter surge,” he said.
“It is alarming that 7,656 children had their appointments cancelled in December and January.”
Mr Cullinane criticised what he called a lack of capacity in hospitals put in place by the Government as covid, flu, and other respiratory illnesses caused huge numbers to attend emergency departments.
“The minister has failed to put in place the capacity in hospitals, in primary care, and community care. Hospital cancellations lead to missed care which has to be caught up on.
“We need to accelerate delivery of elective-only hospitals to decouple scheduled and unscheduled care where possible.
“The current policy of routinely cancelling hospital procedures is a key driver of spiralling waiting lists and needs to be brought to an end by increasing health care capacity.”
A HSE spokesperson told the that cancelled appointments “are rescheduled as early as possible with priority given to patients requiring time-sensitive and urgent treatment”.
They added that there is “a broad range of reasons for changing the appointment date”. These include bringing dates forward due to a change in conditions".
“Other reasons include: no bed space available which could be due to many factors such as: Increased number of patients being admitted through ED; delays in patients going home while waiting for home supports or availability of nursing home or rehabilitation beds; infection prevention and control measures on wards which mean that new patients cannot be admitted for example covid-19, norovirus or influenza outbreaks (or) no theatre or clinic space available,” they said.
“Other reasons for hospital inpatient and outpatient cancellations — which did not apply to the date range in this instance — can include: Cyber attack, adverse weather conditions, industrial action.”
The HSE began working with hospital groups and the Business Information Unit to develop a process for the collection and collation of data on cancellations for outpatient appointments and elective/planned procedures in early 2022.
The HSE said that inpatient and outpatient cancellation data does not measure that a procedure or appointment did not go ahead, rather that the procedure/appointment did not go ahead on the date originally scheduled.
The Oireachtas Health Committee last month heard that the hospital overcrowding crisis is likely to continue “for a number of years” before reforms underway now take effect.
According to the INMO, 465 admitted patients were waiting for beds on Friday morning. 352 patients were waiting in the emergency department, while 113 are in wards elsewhere in the hospital.
At the high point of the pressure in recent weeks, the number waiting on trolleys was more than double that, with some 931 patients waiting on January 3, the worst day of overcrowding in the history of the health service, according to the INMO's trolley watch.