ShannonDoc responded to one patient every minute over the Christmas surge period

ShannonDoc dealt with approximately one patient every minute ove the busy Christmas period, the HSE has revealed.

The out of hours service operated on a 7/7 basis over Christmas and provided 579 more GP appointments - an increase of 40% - when compared to 2022.

A significant portion of patients also presented with respiratory illness due to high levels of RSV and Covid circulating in the community at the time, HSE Mid-West community care CEO Maria Bridgeman said in a written reply to Cllr Seamus Morris at the latest Health Forum West meeting.

Cllr Morris had put in a written question asking if an explanation could be given from Shannondoc (as Requested by the Mid-West Hospital Campaign) for the “disastrous collapse” of services over Christmas due to the apparent lack of staff, .

Cllr Morris also wanted to know why it took days to resolve and why adequate plans were not put in place beforehand.
He stated that the Mid-West Hospital Campaign had written to the CEO of Shannondoc, and they would like him to respond to them through the forum.

ShannonDoc provides out-of-hours GP services across the HSE Mid-West area (CHO3) in Limerick city and county), Clare and north Tipperary.

In her reply, Ms Bridgeman said that ShannonDoc had experienced a very large surge in patients contacting the service over the Christmas period, which was always its busiest time.

In preparation for this year, the HSE Mid West (CHO3) made an additional allocation of €193,000 available to ShannonDoc to roster additional doctors and nurses to deal with the increase in patient volumes.

This year, the out-of-hours service rostered more doctors than previous years with a 30% increase in medical manpower on duty. The additional personnel were secured for the service notwithstanding the well-documented difficulties in recruiting skilled nurses and GPs across all health services, said Ms Bridgeman.

She said that this year’s patient surge was unprecedented with patient volumes contacting the service amounting to almost three times more than last year’s levels.

“On one day alone, over 12,500 inbound calls were made to our switchboard. These are incredible numbers which amount to almost one month of calls in just one day,” she said.

Over the four days during Christmas (December 24-27): ShannonDoc provided 2,280 doctor consultations (up from 1,641 in 2021). This represents a 41% increase across the Mid-West; Clare saw a 49% increase in consultations, north Tipperary saw a 41% increase in consultations; Limerick city and county saw a 35% increase in consultations.

Of the total patients dealt with by ShannonDoc, 81% were categorised as routine with the remainder of patients prioritised as urgent.

“We have observed an increase in routine patients over the Christmas period when compared to normal trends over the year. ShannonDoc is an urgent out-of-hours GP service and routine care should be accessed via a person’s own
GP,” said Ms Bridgeman.

She said that ShannonDoc should only be contacted if urgent medical attention was required and if you cannot safely wait to see your own GP during normal surgery hours.

As a result of the patient surge, during some periods at peak times on Monday, December 26, and Tuesday, December 27, the service was operating above its maximum capacity, she said.

“In some instances, this resulted in patients having difficulty accessing the phone lines. Due to the unprecedented call volumes it is inevitable there would be longer than usual wait times and difficulties in accessing the phone lines during peak times,” said Ms Bridgeman.