The health watchdog says University Hospital Kerry has improved significantly since its last inspection but improvements are still needed.
The Health Information and Quality Authority carried out an unannounced inspection at UHK over two days in January this year, and has now released the report arising from that inspection.
It follows on from a HIQA inspection at the hospital in 2022, after which an entirely new programme for delivery of care was drafted at UHK.
Today’s report found UHK compliant to some extent with nine national standards, and non-compliant with two standards.
HIQA’s inspectors found the hospital had not improved its performance for the six and nine-hour patient experience times in the Emergency Department and continued to fall significantly short of HSE targets.
48% of patients in the ED at 11am on the day of inspection were there more than six hours after registration, 54% were there for longer than nine hours, and 12% were there more than 24 hours; all of these fell short of HSE targets although were improvements on 2022.
The average waiting time from registration at ED to triage was seven minutes, from triage to medical assessment was 28 minutes, and time from decision to admit, to admission to an inpatient bed was four hours and 21 minutes.
All of these average times, the health watchdog noted, were significant improvements since HIQA’s last inspection in 2022.
HIQA inspectors were told at the hospital that the HSE recruitment embargo introduced in 2023 was significantly impacting the implementation of governance and clinical leadership structures.
Inspectors also found no improvement since 2022 in level of compliance with the national standard on workforce, and although medical, nursing, and midwifery staff resourcing had improved, management continued to experience challenges in filling other staff positions.
Vacancies were recorded in a range of positions, and medical staffing levels in the ED were not maintained at levels to support the provision of 24/7 emergency care.
There were also significant deficits in relation to clinical governance of the ED and supervision of non-consultant hospital doctors outside of core hours, while there was evidence that unfilled positions were staffed through agency staff, staff opting to work extra shifts, and through continual recruitment campaigns.
Staff were highly praised by those receiving care, one patient remarking “You could not ask for better care”, while patient experience generally was noted as very good.
Addressing concerns raised in the report, UHK continues to progress recruitment in a number of areas, while it is developing a workforce plan due early next year, and it has implemented a discharge lounge to assist patient flow.
The full report is available here.
