Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 24 October 2024
337. Deputy Niamh Smyth asked the Minister for Health the number of critical care beds funded in the health service in each year from 2016 to 2024, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43633/24]
View answerThe Strategic Plan for Critical Care, which I brought to Cabinet in December 2020, aims to provide for long term increases in critical care capacity to meet current and future needs. It aims to increase total critical care capacity to 458 beds. This surpasses the recommendations of the 2018 Health Service Capacity Review, which set out a requirement for 430 critical care beds by 2031.
Under Phase 1 of the Plan, very significant funding of €78.2 million has been provided by Government since 2021 to add an additional 94 beds, to bring funded capacity to 352 critical care beds.
80 of these beds have already been delivered and capacity is now at 338 (end of September 2024), a significant expansion of 31% over the 2020 baseline of 258.
Capital planning is underway for the five priority projects under Phase 2 (Beaumont Hospital, St James’s Hospital, the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, St Vincent’s University Hospital and Cork University Hospital) that will deliver an additional 106 critical care beds as well as replacing and updating existing critical care accommodation.
The following data, included in the annual National Audit of Critical Care Capacity and Activity Census (2016-2021) and HSE data (2022-2024), clearly shows the impact and success of the Strategic Plan for Critical Care since its inception in 2020.
|
Year |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
2024 |
|
Date |
30/9/16 |
30/9/17 |
N/a |
30/9/19 |
30/9/20 |
30/9/21 |
31/12/22 |
31/12/23 |
30/09/24 |
|
Bed Nos. |
237 |
240 |
249 |
255 |
255* |
302 |
323 |
329 |
338 |
*later adjusted to 258
