This resulted in the postponement of eight elective surgeries because of a lack of beds.
On the face of it, that might not seem like a big deal. But, for every one of those patients, it means having to reorder their lives and endure for a bit longer the condition which has brought them to choose a surgical procedure.
Already, given the state of our elective surgery waiting lists, they are likely to have been waiting longer than desirable.
Further delays have an impact on families, friends and workplaces as well as the patient themselves.
Part of the recently announced winter health plan is the aim of maintaining elective procedures, also known as planned care, as much as possible to reduce waiting times for such interventions.
There will be high hopes this plan will give our short-staffed hospitals some breathing space in the face of winter ills, which could include flu outbreaks and another wave of Covid-19.
Recent measles cases would also suggest we are not many steps away from a measles outbreak, which would be hard to contain given how easily it spreads and the woeful immunisation status of many children and young adults.
In all, 24 initiatives have been announced to help reduce the demand on hospitals.
There is much which makes sense about the plan, which is designed to increase community level care thereby reducing hospital demand.
There is nothing particularly new about the close-to-home concept, but the obese elephant in the room for all of our health services remains under-staffing and all that goes with it — burnout, people leaving the country for better conditions elsewhere, or leaving professions altogether, treatment delays, limits to services and more.
Hospitals, which used to experience some down time in the summer, are dealing with high demand all year round involving patients with increasingly complex conditions.
Short staffing makes dealing with this pressure much more difficult.
Community care (also called primary care) is also dogged by short staffing, so there are fears the winter plan may just shift more work on to another part of the sector already struggling to keep its head above water.
For instance, part of the plan is support for pharmacies to treat minor ailments, something many pharmacists may consider is long overdue.
However, are all pharmacists adequately trained for this and are there enough of them?
And, if people are not familiar with seeking such advice from their friendly pharmacist, they will need to be well informed about this option.
The same applies to the promotion of telehealth in the form of virtual or phone consultations.
The communications plan for this called Right Care Right Time will have to be a humdinger to ensure it reaches everyone and that we all know what we should be doing and who to ask if we don’t.
It will need to address the concern some people listening to the almost constant media clamour about short staffing and its impact may put off seeking help because they do not want to be a bother. The risk there is that whatever ails them may become worse as a result, adversely affecting them as well as adding further burden to the system eventually.
One area which needs urgent ramping up before winter properly sets in is our vaccination programme, for Covid-19, seasonal influenza, measles (for young adults and children) and general childhood vaccinations.
A well-co-ordinated programme covering all of these areas, designed to meet individual communities’ needs, is a must if we are to reduce hospital admissions resulting from largely preventable illnesses.
