UHG one of worst hospitals in country due to A&E ills

New figures which rate the Emergency Department at University Hospital Galway (UHG) among the worst in the country have been described as a “damning indictment” of current management structures at the hospital.

Mayor of Galway Padraig Conneely (FG), who is also Chairman of the HSE West, said he was not a bit surprised to discover that more than one in four of the patients admitted to the Emergency Department (ED) faced a wait of more than nine hours to be either admitted to a bed or discharged.

The latest hospital ED tables, for the month of November, show that UHG is the sixth worst performing hospital in the State with only 73.7% of patients being admitted or discharged within nine hours.

Mayor Conneely said the true figure for more recent weeks is set to be even higher, given that two recent outbreaks of the winter vomiting bug and overcrowding at the ED led to some surgeries being cancelled.

“I am not in the least surprised by the figures which emerged yesterday,” said Mayor Conneely. “I regularly visit the hospital and I have major concerns about what’s going on there. There has to be a better way and these latest figures prove that.

“Despite the new management structures which have been put in place, they don’t seem to have repaired the system. It’s not working. They cannot seem to break away from the dinosaur which was the old HSE management system.”

Mayor Conneely said he did not need the publication of any figures to tell him that the ED was among the worst performing hospitals, as he regularly saw patients on trollies when he visited UHG.

“I regularly see the stress, agony and pain on the faces of the patients there,” he said. “I keep hearing horrific stories of elderly people waiting up to 24 hours to get a bed. The patients are the most important people there and there has to be a more patient-focused service at UHG.

“While there is no blame attached to the doctors and nurses on the front line, the HSE is like a big dinosaur that’s still there.