University Hospital Limerick to receive additional critical care beds

UNIVERSITY Hospital Limerick is to receive an additional six critical care beds in 2021, the Minister for Health has announced.  

Stephen Donnelly, TD, has this Friday revealed details of a strategic multi-year plan to expand adult critical care capacity nationwide from 255 beds to 446 beds.

Work on Phase One of the plan has already begun and will see 321 adult critical care beds in place by the end of 2021, compared to 255 at the start of this year. This figure includes six beds at University Hospital Limerick.

The additional beds will be funded by €52 million allocated in Budget 2021. This funding will also allow for education and training initiatives to increase the critical care workforce and for investment in critical care retrieval services. 

Minister Donnelly said: “Ensuring the right resources are in place for our most critically ill patients is a priority for me and for this Government. This plan is a major milestone in the expansion of our critical care capacity.  At the start of this year, there were 255 adult critical care beds in the country. We are increasing this number to 321 by end of 2021 – a 25 per cent increase. To put this in context, the 2019 National Adult Critical Care Bed Capacity Census reported an additional 21 beds opened over the three-year period from 2017 to 2019, an average of seven per year. The plan will ultimately bring us to 446 critical care beds, not only addressing but exceeding the 2018 Health Service Capacity Review recommendation of 430 beds.”

Critical care is a key component in the implementation of key strategies including trauma, cancer and maternity care, and in the provision of specialist care including organ transplant. 

This plan sets out two phases of capacity expansion to address the immediate and long-term needs in the public hospital system, as follows:

Phase 1:

2021

Retain permanently the 40 adult critical care beds put in place as part of the response to Covid-19;
Provide an additional 26 beds in the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital (8), Tallaght University Hospital (12) and University Hospital Limerick (6);
Develop the critical care workforce by increasing the numbers of onsite critical care nurse educators and by increasing access to critical care nurse education at foundation and post-graduate levels;
Increase the number of hospitals with critical care outreach teams to improve patient care and reduce re-admissions to critical care units; and
Increase the capacity of the National Ambulance Service’s critical care retrieval services.
Overall, funding of €52m has been provided in Budget 2021 to deliver the additional 66 beds in 2020 and 2021, a key step to ensuring the readiness of the health system for provision of critical care to Covid and non-Covid patients as part of the continued response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Phase 1 also envisages the provision of an additional 8 beds in St. Vincent’s University Hospital in 2022, subject to completion of the necessary infrastructural development and planning processes, and with funding to be sought within the 2022 estimates process.

Phase 2:

Development of new build capacity at five prioritised sites (Beaumont Hospital, St James’s Hospital, the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, St Vincent’s University Hospital and Cork University Hospital) to support the delivery of an additional 117 beds.
The second phase supports the ambitious long-term strategic goal of increasing overall critical care capacity to 446 beds, fully addressing the critical care recommendations of the Health Service Capacity Review.
These developments are subject to completion of the necessary capital strategic assessments and preliminary business cases, in line with the Public Spending Code. The Capital Plan for 2021 allocates €5m to allow for the commencement in 2021 of the strategic appraisals and business cases.
It is intended that these capital developments will substantially increase the overall complement of critical care beds in hub hospitals to meet the needs of national specialties. These national specialties include the solid organ transplant programmes (kidney, liver, and heart and lung), the national burns service, neurosurgery, interventional neuroradiology (thrombectomy), ECMO and major trauma services.