UHL must speed up reforms to end 'horror story', says mother whose daughter died there
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The mother of a young woman who died in University Hospital Limerick has said reforms to end the "horror story" there must come faster as patients in the mid-west face another week of chaos.
People in Limerick, Clare and Tipperary will see more operations and appointments cancelled due to severe overcrowding, which has blighted the region for over a decade, with many now waiting months for vital appointments only to be disappointed.
Melanie Cleary from Corbally said after her daughter died at UHL in 2019, “they said to me this will never happen again".
Eve, 21, died after being sent home from the ED having spent 17 hours on a trolley. Her mother felt echoes of that at the recent inquests into the deaths of Aoife Johnston in 2022 and Martin Abbott in 2019.
“Martin Abbott’s death really affected me, and Aoife’s death made me so angry,” Ms Cleary said. She said reports on Ms Johnston were “like a horror story” for her family.
“A lot of things in that took me back to that night,” she said. “I really believe if they had learned lessons after Eve died, then Aoife might not have died, it was heart-wrenching.”
A member of the Midwest Hospital Campaign, she plans to run in the general election. “It’s not just about the hospital, there are waiting lists for homecare, there’s not enough GPs,” she said.
Health minister Stephen Donnelly defended the wave of cancellations in the mid-west, pointing to a decrease in trolleys now.
“The only solution is a radical increase in capacity coupled with radical reform at the hospital in terms of patient flow. This reset is part of that reform of patient flow,” he said.
The reset was recommended by a specialist team headed by Grace Rothwell, known for turning around overcrowding in Waterford.
Mr Donnelly described the team's report as “stark”, saying: “Some practices which are now standard in other hospitals have not been implemented at UHL.
“This simply has to change. It's not acceptable, it’s not fair on the people of the mid-west and it’s not fair on the hard-working, dedicated healthcare workers."
Between January and May 62,000 more people came to all hospitals than the same time last year, he said, but there were nearly 8,000 fewer people on trolleys. At UHL, 3,000 more people came and trolley numbers were up by 2,000.
Sean Egan, director of healthcare regulation at Hiqa, has concerns about the wider system locally. “Their presentation rate to the emergency department for people who’ve not gone to a GP is a lot higher than for other hospitals,” he said.
He added: "(Overcrowding) reflects deficit in capacity of course within the acute hospital but it also reflects the lack of alternatives in some instances.”