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Dublin: 12 °C Tuesday 21 May, 2013

Top performing hospitals, levels of absenteeism – HSE figures revealed

The latest HSE performance report evaluates hospitals’ discharge and admission rates, as well as response times and lengths of stay.

THE LATEST PERFMORMANCE report from the HSE reveals that no hospital reached the targets sets for discharge or admittance to wards.

The report, which contains data to the end of March 2012 found that no facility managed to discharge or admit 95 per cent of attendees within 6 hours, or 100 per cent within 9 hours.

However St. Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny, Kerry General Hospital, Letterkenny General Hospital, Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinsloe and St. John’s in Limerick were all named as ‘top performing hospitals in this area, with admittance or discharge rates of 80 per cent of those seen within six hours, and 90 per cent within nine hours.

The hospitals “facing the greatest challenge” in this area after six hours were Tallaght – which had a rate of 39.6 per cent in six hours, and the Mater, with a rate of 47.2 per cent.

Tallaght and Mater were again among the worst when it came to nine hour waits, with 29.9 per cent and 13.6 per cent being discharged or admitted, while Beaumont came in at 17.7 per cent.

Other information released in the report includes:

  • Facilities with the highest rates of absenteeism are Cork Dental Hospital, Children’s Sunshine Home and Lourdes Orthopaedic Hospital. Absenteeism was lowest in the medical/dental field, and highest in the area of ‘general support staff’.
  • Inpatient discharges were 3.6 per cent higher than the same period last year and nine per cent about the National Service Plan (NSP) target
  • Emergency admissions to acute hospitals were 2.7 per cent higher than last year  - 6.9 per cent above NSP target
  • There was an increase in activity in elective admissions of 4.7 per cent. This is attributed to hospitals moving more patients through the system in response to emergency department targets as well as delivering increased numbers of elective procedures
  • The average length of stay for a patient in March was 8.2 days, with the target for 2012 at 5.8 days.
  • 1,156 people attended symptomatic breast cancer services with an urgent appointment in March
  • 51.7 per cent of life-threatening 999 calls were responded to within eight minutes, falling below the target of 75 per cent
  • The HSE’s latest performance report reveals that it was €145.8 over budget by the end of March. The financial position is due to be discussed at a HSE board meeting tomorrow.
  • In the first quarter of 2012 there were 578 referrals made to the elder abuse service, a 45 per cent decline from the same period last year. However, the HSE said that this is likely due to “no dedicated officer currently in post, namely HSE DNE and HSE South”.

“Too many people waiting far too long” – 200,000 on hospital waiting lists>

Read the HSE’s performance report>

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Comments (12 Comments)

  • The best scoring hospitals are small hospitals. Don’t seem to lend itself to the idea of removing the small hospital. Surely we can manage a system of centralised centres of excellence and the manageable well sized small to medium hospital.

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    • I think this report deals with admission, discharge and waiting times. I don’t think it looks at patient outcome. All the evidence from international studies would suggest patients benefit most from centres of excellence.

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    • its all about cost as we know.

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    • Interesting..if you ask any of the cancer patients currently travelling 6 hours a day, if not more, for treatment they might disagree with you about those centres of excellence and I’ve also seen contrasting reports that proof the centres of excellence model is a failure unless there are excellent transport links to the hospitals – of which we don’t have. Cancer is traumatic enough without having to spend hours travelling everyday. People need the support of their friends and family and time to rest in order to fight the disease. The length really ill people have to travel everyday is a disgrace!

      Reply
  • In every place of work employees have an absentee level, they get sick, have babies, catch colds and more serious illnesses like lung disease, heart disease and cancer etc. It’s common sense that if the sick leave level in a particular place of work is higher than expected then there’s something wrong, either the employees are the problem, or the place of work is. When it somes to the HSE everyone assumes its the HSE staff to blame and are quick to point the finger.
    Lets say however we had a leper colony in Ireland and the staff who worked there had a high absentee level. The soution? Find a job with less risk. So it is with many of the staff in the HSE. They are exposed to every virus, bacteria and pathogen that every patient presents with, they’re not immune. They work in a life and death environment, literally, and this was before all the health cuts. They deal with frustrated patients, their families while they have less staff and have to cope with drug rounds, needle stick injuries, heavy lifting of patients. Many staff are stretched to the limit.
    When we read reports like this we’re fed data, percentages, statistics and I can’t help but get the impression that those behind these know damn well that most HSE staff are decent people just doing their best and this is nothing more than the first part of a cynical ploy to use the media, again, to change the PS Sick Leave Scheme. Watch this space.

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  • The stress of working under pressure like these frontline workers do must be extreme. I feel sorry for them .

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  • The underlying message seems to be-
    Get sick, become a HSE target.

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  • Damien 08/06/12 #

    “The HSE’s latest performance report reveals that it was €145.8 over budget by the end of March.”

    This always annoys me, surely health of the nation shouldn’t have a budget within reason!

    Reply
  • Ye get your stats from people who don’t understand the use absenteeism stats. This is how it works if I work Monday to Friday and I am out sick on a Friday, I have to get a cert to say I was sick on Saturday and Sunday also same on a Monday you have to get a cert to cover you from the last day you wére in work until the day you are registered back. So for instance if a nude goes out sick for her last day of work she might be off for the week, not rosteredfor a week she still has to get a cert to cover her from the day she was sick until the week later when she is rostered back on its no wonder that the statistics show a high rate of absenteisim.

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  • Ballinasloe is a very good hospital. I’m having my baby in the rotunda but the only other hospital I would feel comfortable in would be ballinasloe

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  • surely with all that sick time, it proves we don’t need the absentee staff?

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