HSE withdraws funding for 100 step‑down beds at University Hospital Limerick

Plans to add 100 step‑down or rehabilitation beds to ease the chronic overcrowding at University Hospital Limerick (UHL) have been abandoned after the HSE announced there was no funding available.

The tender for the beds was advertised in March but was later withdrawn without explanation. At the same time, 60 beds at a step‑down facility 1.8 km from UHL remain unused. Bartra Healthcare, which runs the €20 million Raheen Lodge facility in Mungret, said it had sought a contract to provide 60‑80 step‑down beds and its own ambulance transfers, so HSE National Ambulance Service ambulances would not need to move patients out of the acute system.

Limerick Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan raised the tender cancellation in a parliamentary question. HSE Mid West Acute and Older People Services chief executive Ian Carter replied on 3 November that the procurement was withdrawn because no funding allocation existed, although the clinical need for the beds remains.

Deputy Quinlivan criticised the response, describing it as evidence of “decades of under‑funding” in the Mid West health service and noting that patients are staying in acute beds longer than necessary, increasing pressure on UHL’s emergency department.

Data show that in the first eight months of the year an average of 38 acute beds in the Mid West – 28 at UHL – were occupied daily by patients approved for care elsewhere, peaking at 66 on 14 August. HSE Mid West reported more than 2 375 additional admissions year‑to‑date compared with the same period last year and warned that recent approval of 34 short‑stay beds will not resolve overcrowding.

Source: Limerick Post. Photo: Даниил Зенцов / Pexels.