Senior hospital management in the midwest health region have raised serious concerns about staffing shortages and ongoing patient safety issues across the region.
It is understood that senior representatives of the UL Hospitals Group outlined their concerns about University Hospital Limerick (UHL) during a meeting with Oireachtas members earlier this week.
In a briefing, hospital management warned that demand for services is outstripping available resources, while difficulties filling priority posts are placing increasing pressure on services.
Concerns were also raised about recruitment arrangements, with hospital management understood to have told politicians that they no longer have direct control over recruitment decisions, despite being held responsible for the delivery and safety of services.
It is understood there are more than 350 vacant posts in the midwest region and hospital managers have been unable to recruit since late June due to HSE employment restrictions.
The concerns relate to hospitals in the midwest, including UHL, Ennis and Nenagh.
Management said UHL is seeing record levels of admissions to its emergency department which it said is creating huge risks on a daily basis.
They said elective procedures across the midwest will undoubtedly be cancelled over the coming months — thereby causing more issues for these patient down the line.
UHL management warns that some elective procedures could be cancelled over the coming months
They highlighted the fact that hundreds of critical posts remain unfulfilled across the region.
The HSE Mid West region serves around 420,000 people across Limerick, Clare and north Tipperary.
It is understood demand for services at UHL has increased exponentially over the past number of years.
A source said that all available mitigations have been put in place in UHL to maintain patient safety.
The Health and Information Quality Authority (HIQA) has repeatedly warned about patient safety risks at University Hospital Limerick.
In its latest inspection report, published in June, the health watchdog found that despite improvements, the hospital continued to experience significant capacity pressures, with patients still being treated on trolleys in inpatient wards.
It warned that patient safety risks would persist until the shortage of hospital beds was addressed.
The claims echo concerns raised earlier this year at Cork University Hospital, where senior management warned that staffing shortages could pose risks to patient safety.
Politicians who attended the briefing this week on the mid-west region said they were shocked by what they heard.
Labour TD for Tipperary North Alan Kelly told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that “this is literally the most worrying, depressing and concerning meeting I’ve ever been at in this zone … I basically see it as a cry for help.
“The words ‘governance issues’, ‘safety risks’ were being said multiple times because the HIQA report was 14 months ago,” he said.
“It said we needed obviously a new hospital. There’s no guarantee that the new board is going to actually recommend a new hospital. [That report] has to come by June 2027.
“There is no plan. UHL, for instance, is looking at potentially 400 A&E cases every day between December and January.
“By comparison, Beaumont will probably have 280 and they have the back beds, the beds inside and downstream to deal with that.
“UHL has not and the whole midwest again is being discriminated against and we as people are suffering.”
Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan said: “The briefing was staggering and shocking in the stark way that the senior staff of midwest explained to us they are having.
“The problems stem from the systematic underfunding for the region over the last number of decades.”