Almost 55% of patients aged seventy and over who attended the Emergency Department of University Hospital Galway last year waited on trolleys for more than nine hours to be admitted.

It comes as Saolta University Healthcare Group conceded that the HSE’s embargo on recruiting staff was impacting on service delivery in ED – adding to patients’ wait times.

And while Ann Cosgrove, Chief Operating Officer at Saolta, which runs UHG, acknowledged problems in ED, she said that the numbers of patients on trolleys had reduced by more than a third, compared with 2022.

But despite the improvements recorded last year, UHG was again swamped with patients last week. UHG had to publicly apologise last Thursday after attendance at ED reached 235 the day before, with lengthy wait times and 45 patients on trolleys.

It was the third successive week that either UHG or Portiuncula in Ballinasloe apologised for chronic overcrowding in Emergency Departments.

Tony Canavan Regional Executive Officer, for HSE West and Northwest, conceded the national recruitment embargo was impacting on service delivery in UHG’s ED.

They were responding to questions at the HSE West Regional Health Forum from Fianna Fáil duo, City Councillor John Connolly, and County Councillor Daithí Ó Cualáin, a nurse.

Cllr Ó Cualáin said he was aware of one man who had spent two days in “purgatory” on a trolley in the ED of UHG, before he made it to “heaven” – a bed on a ward.

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