2,500 waited more than a day for treatment at Emergency Dept

More than 2,500 patients waited longer than 24 hours to receive treatment in the Emergency Department at University Hospital Galway last year, internal records have revealed.

The shocking figures show that one patient in every 20 attending the hospital’s ED had to wait until the next day to be treated, admitted or discharged.

The statistics are contained in briefing information prepared for Health Minister Simon Harris.

Fine Gael TD for Galway West, Hildegarde Naughton – who obtained the information – said the figures were another indictment of the city’s healthcare infrastructure that underlined the need for a new hospital in Galway.

They reveal that 5% of patients attending the Emergency Department are forced to wait longer than 24 hours to be admitted. This means that nearly 2,560 patients waited for more than a day in 2015.

A total of 51,084 people had attended the ED between January and October last year – 2,554 of these had to wait for more than 24 hours, according to the internal documents.

This does not include the chaos and overcrowding experienced at the hospital during the final months of 2016, during which the public was asked not to attend the ED unless absolutely necessary – UHG’s so-called ‘Code Black’ status.

For more on the crisis at UHG’s Emergency Department, see this week’s Galway City Tribune.
Buy a digital edition of this week’s Galway City Tribune here, or download the app for Android or iPhone.