Minister for Health highlights 28% increase in critical care beds

The Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly is today highlighting the significant increase in critical care capacity to 330 beds, a 28% increase or 72 more beds since 2020 delivered through the government's Strategic Plan for Critical Care.

To date, the Plan has provided significant investment of €78.2 million to fund an additional 94 critical care beds and bring funded capacity to 352 beds. The recent 72-bed increase compares with an increase of 21 in the previous eight years.

Approximately 770 highly skilled staff were recruited to the end of 2023 to support this additional capacity. To ensure further workforce availability, a new contract has been put in place to provide 166 training places for critical care nurses every year for the next six years, 1,000 places in total and a 66% increase on the previous number of places.

Minister Donnelly said:

"Our investment in Critical Care has been transformative, with the number of critical care beds now 28% above the 2020 baseline and almost 800 new staff in place.

"Timely access to an appropriate level of critical care improves survival and outcomes for critically ill patients. With the additional critical care capacity to date, there have been significant improvements in timely admission to critical care.

"As well as providing much needed additional critical care beds, this increase is supporting the implementation of strategies including trauma, cancer, and maternity care, and in the provision of specialist care including organ transplantation.

"The development of critical care capacity involves much more than simply sourcing a bed and putting it in a hospital. It requires highly skilled nurses and doctors who are in demand around the world. That is why we have also invested heavily in workforce supply and training, including provision for a 66% increase in training places for critical care nurses."

Commenting, HSE CEO Bernard Gloster said:

"This approach to the development of critical care ensures that we have a modern-day response to this vital need in our health service and that we are future-proofing at every milestone."

In addition to the capacity increases achieved under Phase 1 of the Strategic Plan for Critical Care, capital funding of €5 million was allocated to commence the planning for five prioritised Phase 2 developments that will further increase capacity to 458 beds.

Capital planning is underway for these five projects that will deliver 106 new critical care beds in Phase 2 as well as replacing and updating existing ones. This will exceed the recommendations of the 2018 Health Service Capacity Review that had recommended a target of 430 critical care beds by 2031.

Notes

Governance and policy

The Strategic Plan for Critical Care is aligned with the National Critical Care Clinical Programme hub-and-spoke model and reflects the overall strategic direction of Sláintecare - delivery of the right care, in the right place at the right time.

Patient impact

Approximately 12,500 adults become critically ill in Ireland each year. The increase in capacity has raised the ratio of beds to 6.3 per 100,000 of population, increased from 5.6/100,000 reported in the 2022 NOCA Clinical Audit. Increased critical care capacity is associated with reduced occupancy rates and improved patient outcomes.

Development of the HSE Critical Care Retrieval Service continues to provide additional capacity for time-sensitive transfer of patients between hospitals and specialist critical care units. In 2023, 1,045 patients were transferred to ICU beds from other hospitals.

Where necessary, the number of critical care beds can surge beyond the current baseline of 330 as part of an emergency response.