Portiuncula more than €3m over budget by April end

The operating cost of Ballinasloe's Portiuncula Hospital exceeded its budget by €3.2m during the first four months of 2010. That's according to figures released by the HSE's hospital performance information system, HealthStat. This excess spend for the opening third of this year is almost identical to the amount by which the hospital exceeded its budget for the whole of 2009 (€3.3m). Just over €14m was budgeted for the operation of Portiuncula from January to April, but the amount spent on running the hospital during that period was 23% more than that, at €17.5m. The HealthStat report for the month of April gave the hospital a rating of 'poor' in 9 of the 19 categories in which its performance was assessed, with 'good' ratings received in 8 categories and the remaining two performance areas deemed 'average'. Among the areas requiring attention was the length of time patients had to wait to be transferred from the Emergency Department to acute admission. In April, 39 patients were left waiting for more 24 hours at the hospital before their acute admission, HealthStat reported. 'Waiting times for routine outpatient physiotherapy' and the 'appropriateness of admissions and care' were other areas where the report deemed the hospital's performance to be inadequate. It also highlighted the high level of staff hours lost to absenteeism. The hospital lost more than 6% of staff hours to absenteeism, breaching the HSE target of not losing more than 3.5%. This was the fifth highest rate of staff absenteeism among the 27 Irish hospitals examined by HealthStat. The hospital's overall performance rating for April was 'average'.