A new national survey has found that 70% of patients were not admitted to a ward from emergency departments within the HSE's target waiting time of six hours.
The National Inpatient Experience Survey involved over 12,000 participants and 40 acute hospitals.
One of the suggestions made by participants was that there should be some indicator of waiting times in emergency departments.
Long waiting times in the emergency department were highlighted as a problem, with 4% of respondents saying they waited 48 hours or more before being admitted to a ward.
The majority of respondents said they were always treated with respect and dignity in the emergency department.
The survey also found that 28% of patients said that the food they received in hospital was poor or fair, while within that figure, 9% said food was poor.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Overall the findings show some improvements on last year, with patients reporting more positive experiences of discharge or transfer procedures.
Around 96% of patients said the hospital room or ward was very clean or fairly clean.
Many people said there was not enough time to discuss their treatment with medical staff and felt that they were not fully involved in the decisions about their care or their discharge from hospital.
The survey was conducted in association with the Health Information and Quality Authority, the HSE and the Department of Health.
To be eligible for the survey, patients must have spent a minimum of 24 hours in hospital and must have been discharged in May 2019.
They received the survey by post a few weeks after their discharge.
