The Health Service Executive has said it will introduce a target waiting time of 12 hours for patients from October in Accident and Emergency departments.
The announcement comes after a report out today said that at least seven hospital A&E departments are unfit for that purpose.
The target waiting time will not be counted until a decision to admit a patient is made by a doctor.
The HSE said it will ultimately meet a total waiting time of six hours from arrival to discharge or admission, as recommended by the Emergency Department Task Force report.
The hospitals identified in today's report are the Mercy in Cork, Wexford General, Cavan General, Letterkenny General, Our Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda and the Mater and Beaumont Hospitals in Dublin.
The report concludes that the core problems in A&E services are: a shortage of beds to meet patient need, variations in the availability of clinical decision-making and a significant number of hospitals working close to 100% capacity.
It adds that there should be a zero tolerance of having patients waiting on trolleys.
To help ease pressures, the report says there should be greater access to diagnostic tests, nearly 2,500 more long-term care beds over the next year, as well as improved chronic disease management.
It is over two and a half years since the Government announced a ten-point plan to tackle overcrowding in A&E departments.
Bed capacity study
Meanwhile, a separate report on hospital bed capacity for the HSE, produced by PA Consulting, says that around 13% of patients admitted to hospital could potentially be treated elsewhere.
It notes that this figure compares with similar studies in other countries, where between 20 to 40% of admissions are deemed inappropriate.
While the report does not give a figure on the number of extra hospital beds required in Ireland, it says extra and different capacity is needed, along with more home care and illness prevention.
