Galway ambulance delays putting lives at risk
Dara BradleyNews
Patients’ lives are being put at risk because ambulances are forced to park outside hospitals across the West for hours.
New figures obtained by the Connacht Tribune reveal that more than 500 ambulances a month are parked outside University Hospital Galway (UHG) for more than a half an hour – 95 of them were waiting over an hour. The official figures were released by the Health Service Executive (HSE) to Denis Naughten, Independent TD for the new Roscommon Galway constituency following a Parliamentary Question.
The recommended time is no more than a 20 minutes wait in hospital car parks.
Deputy Naughten said the figures are shocking and reveal how in total ambulances spent 532 hours parked outside the Emergency Department of UHG in the month of April, the latest month for which data was made available.
The figures show that 20% of all ambulances that arrive at Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe are waiting for over one hour in the car park.
“It is a deplorable situation and I have no doubt that lives are at risk,” said Deputy Naughten.
“It is clear that the overcrowding caused by the closure of Roscommon A&E is putting huge pressure on Portiuncula, with one in every five ambulances forced to wait more than an hour to discharge their patient into the care of hospital staff.”
These delays or “turnaround times” are a measure of how long it takes an ambulance to clear a hospital after its arrival with a patient. It includes patient handover to clinical personnel within the hospital and the time taken to clean and replenish ambulances to be ready for the next call.
Turnaround delays have a direct impact on overall response times, as ambulances are held back from taking on their next 999 call, said Deputy Naughten.
He said the reason for the delays is twofold: The Emergency Department’s are overcrowded and have no beds or trolleys to accommodate the ambulance patients; or staff in the Emergency Department are too busy tied-up with more serious cases and so ambulance staff can’t ‘sign over’ their patients.
He said at one point last November, every ambulance that was stationed at Roscommon, Loughrea, and Ballinasloe was parked up outside UHG, with repercussions for ambulance response times across the West.
Deputy Naughten said: “This disclosure is nothing short of deplorable as it means that these ambulances are not available to respond to the next 999 call which in some instances could by hours away from the nearest emergency department.
“The figures clearly highlight the need to properly resource the emergency departments in Portiuncula and University Hospital Galway in order to meet the demands which are being placed upon them.
“However, it also again highlights the lack of capacity within the ambulance service, and the need to provide additional ambulances and crews to operate the new ambulance stations at Tuam and Loughglynn, in West Roscommon. Is it any wonder that the National Ambulance Service is failing to meet the HIQA target of having an ambulance at the scene of a life threatening emergency within 18 minutes?
“These figures are just another example of where the emergency services are failing the public who rely upon them due to inadequate resourcing, which effectively means that we have death by geography, for those who are forced to rely on the ambulance service to get to hospital.”