UHG is the third most overcrowded public hospital in Ireland again today with 47 patients on trolleys or in over packed wards.

There are a further 22 patients without a proper bed at Portiuncula as the Ballinasloe hospital continues to have an extremely busy season.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation says that a new record has been set for overcrowding today with 760 patients waiting for a bed, beating a previous record of 714 on March 12 of 2018.

The worst affected hospital today is UH Limerick according to the INMO’s daily Trolley/Ward Watch with 91 patients without a bed, staggering even by its standards, and beating its previous record of 85 people.

That’s followed by 56 people at Cork UH, 47 at University Hospital Galway, and 40 at South Tipperary.

The INMO is calling for a major incident protocol to be adopted across the country, as was done in March 2018.

This would likely see all non-emergency admissions stopped, electives cancelled, and extra bed capacity sourced from the private and public sectors.

The union is also calling for an infection control plan due to the additional risks posed in highly overcrowded environments.

“Ireland’s beleaguered health service continues to break records in the worst possible way,” said INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha.

“Our members are working in impossible conditions to provide the best care they can.”

“The excuse that this is all down to the flu simply doesn’t hold,” Phíl Ní Sheaghdha said.

“There are always extra patients in winter, but we simply do not get the extra capacity to cope. This is entirely predictable, yet we seemingly fail to deal with it every year.”

Phil Ní Sheaghdha also reiterated her call for the HSE’s “counterproductive” hiring freeze to be scrapped, claiming it has left the health service “understaffed and thus overcrowded”.

UHG is the third most overcrowded hospital in Ireland for the second day in a row with 35 people on trolleys according to the INMO.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation’s daily Trolley/Ward Watch says that there are 620 people on trolleys in public hospitals today.

Cork University Hospital tops the list today with a staggering 73 patients without a proper bed.

It’s followed by University Hospital Limerick with 63 on trolleys, with UHG and Mayo University Hospital tied for third place at 35.

Back in Galway Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe is still dealing with higher than normal levels of crowding. Today it is dealing with 18 patients without a proper bed.

End of year figures from the INMO show that there were almost 10,000 hospital patients in Galway deprived of a proper bed last year, with 7,998 at UHG and another 1,503 at Portiuncula.

General Secretary of the INMO Phil Ní Sheaghdha said that overcrowding is no longer a winter issue, but a year round crisis which gets worse in winter.

“Things are getting worse, not better. These figures should be falling, but we’re going the wrong direction,” she said.

“2019 saw thousands more patients without proper beds – often at one of the most vulnerable points in their lives.”

The only way to combat this, she suggested, is by tackling the understaffing issue in hospitals by ending the HSE’s hiring freeze.

University Hospital Galway was the third most overcrowded in Ireland last year, with 7,993 patients on trolleys throughout 2019.

In total 118,367 people were left without a hospital bed in 2019, making it the worst year for hospital overcrowding in record according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, 9% higher than in 2018.

The numbers at UHG were up 7% from 2018, when the yearly figure came to 7,452 people on trolleys, and represent a 64% jump from the start of the decade.

In Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe there were 1,503 patients without a proper bed this year, representing a 14.3% increase on 2018, and 56.6% higher than in 2010.

“Things are getting worse, not better. These figures should be falling, but we’re going the wrong direction,” INMO General Secretary Phil Ní Sheaghdha said.

“2019 saw thousands more patients without proper beds – often at one of the most vulnerable points in their lives.”

“Overcrowding used to be a winter problem. Now it’s an all-year problem, which gets worse in winter,” she added.

The worst months for hospital overcrowding recorded by the INMO were November (12,055), October (11,452), and September (10,641).

University Hospital Limerick was the worst affected, as expected, with 13,941 patients without beds, followed by Cork UH (11,066), UHG (7,993), South Tipperary General Hospital (6,942), and UH Waterford (6,313).

The way to tackle this is by increasing staffing and bed capacity, and by proceeding with Sláintecare reforms, and the fact that this is well known is what’s so frustrating, she added.

“Instead, the HSE continues to enforce its rigid recruitment controls, starving hospitals and community services of the staff they need.”

“Our members are rightly appalled by the conditions they are forced to work and care for patients in,” Phil Ní Sheaghdha added.

She concluded by saying that getting understaffing and overcrowding in hand this year will require and end to the recruitment ban and aggressive investment.