by Louise Doyle
CONCERN has been raised that Letterkenny University Hospital has half the number of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds that it needs.
The hospital currently has six funded ICU beds and presently operates four surgical High Dependency Unit (HDU) beds.
The detail came to light at the recent meeting of Regional Health Forum West.
Cllr Gerry McMonagle questioned if a “lottery postcode” was at play in Donegal.
He asked if the number of ICU beds in LUH was sufficient to meet the needs of the hospital, and if approval has been sought by Saolta to the HSE in increase bed capacity.
He was advised a submission was made to acute hospital for a reconfiguration of existing beds to deliver an integrated critical care floor including ICU and HDU beds. But he was told this has to go through a former capital submission.
He told the meeting that he raised this issue three years ago, and was told by the then Clinical Lead, Dr Michael Power that LUH should have had 15 ICU beds at that time.
“We were not one of the five selected hospitals for increased ICU beds at that time and we’re sitting here now in 2024 and going back to the same basic answer,” said Cllr McMonagle.
“We need ICU beds and we need double what we have. I don’t know how we’re surviving on what we do have to be honest, especially for the population of Donegal. It’s half of what we actually need. If it was recommended that we needed 15 ICU beds in 2021 and we didn’t make the cut the time the funding was given out, then we need to ask the question is there a postcode lottery here for funding for the health service?
“Six beds with the population we have is not good enough and it is certainly not sufficient, and I would urge you to make an appeal again to try to get this increased.”
Responding, Chief Operations Officer, Saolta, Ann Cosgrove, said plans are afoot to address the issue in the short and long-term. But she warned those plans need funding.
“In the immediate term what we were hoping to do through reconfiguration is create a critical care floor where you would have the 10 beds together because it is more efficient to operate it, because they are two separate areas as it stands. Even as a reconfiguration it costs money and we do have to get funding for it. It is not possible to fund it through revenue.
“In terms of the site itself in Letterkenny, the Development Control Plan is in the process of being updated. There is still more work to do, and that will allow for in the longer term development and expansion of services on the site. From an operational perspective, if they got this development with all the beds together and then some post- anaesthetics care beds they feel that would meet the needs of the service for the next number of years until we get a bigger block development on the site.”
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