96 additional beds to become available at University Hospital Limerick in coming days
David Raleigh
96 additional beds are to become available at the University Hospital Limerick (UHL) in the coming days, in what will be first in a tranche of major developments to alleviate the hospital's overcrowding crisis.
A new unit containing the 96 single beds, which has been under construction for the past three years. will be operational within the next week, it is understood.
All of the 96 beds will be new additional bed stock.
The €96 million development, which it’s understood will be fully staffed, is the first of three 96-bed blocks proposed at the UHL site.
The second block of additional bed capacity is hoped to be opened in 2027, while the third is earmarked to come on stream in the 2030s.
Consistently the most overcrowded hospital in the country, there were 86 patients waiting on trolleys on corridors at UHL's emergency department (ED) and at wards on Thursday morning, according to figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO).
There were 118 patients languishing on trolleys at the hospital the previous day.
The State's health watchdog HIQA previously stated following unannounced inspections at UHL’s emergency department, that it found the dignity and privacy of patients in the swamped ED compromised.
Previous HIQA reports found UHL to be understaffed, and posing a significant risk to patient safety.
A year ago this month, HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster issued an apology to the family of Aoife Johnston, following publication of a report into the 16-year-old’s death amid a litany of care failings at the hospital.
Aoife, who it was accepted should have been given life-saving medicine within 10 minutes of arriving at UHL, with queried sepsis, received the medicine 13.5 hours after presenting at the ED. She died at the hospital on December 19.2022.
The report, by retired Chief Justice Frank Clarke, concluded that Aoife's death "was almost certainly avoidable".
Mr Clarke warned that unless the fundamental problem of UHL's overcrowding and understaffing was dealt with, the risk of further avoidable deaths occurring at the hospital would "inevitably be present".
After the report was published, HSE chief Bernard Gloster said: "We failed Aoife and our failure has resulted in the most catastrophic consequences for her and her family."
UHL clinicians told Ms Johnston's inquest held in Kilmallock in April last year that the "gargantuanly overcrowded" ED was "like a death trap" on the weekend Aoife presented there.
The ED at UHL has been the only 24-hour emergency department in the Mid West region - serving Limerick, Clare. North Tipperary, and parts of north Cork and north Kerry - after ED units were closed and streamlined to UHL in 2009.
The Mid West Hospital Campaign Group, which includes persons whose loved ones have died on trolleys at UHL during overcrowded conditions, have repeatedly called on the government to give the green light to open additional EDs in the region.
The HSE Mid West was contacted for comment.
