Riga is lacking either an additional emergency care hospital or a facility capable of treating patients who do not require highly specialized medical services, according to Dace Žentiņa, a board member of Pauls Stradiņš Clinical University Hospital, speaking in an interview with Latvian Television’s Rīta panorāma.
Commenting on the long queues that formed outside the hospital’s Emergency Medical Centre last week, Žentiņa acknowledged that the situation was partly caused by an unusually large influx of patients. As a result, hospital staff were no longer able to cope with the demand using the available personnel and bed capacity.
However, she stressed that the issue is not limited to a single hospital’s emergency department.
“There are also broader systemic issues that need to be addressed,” Žentiņa said, emphasizing that solutions should be developed jointly by both university hospitals, the Ministry of Health, the Municipality of Riga, and the State Emergency Medical Service (NMPD).
According to Žentiņa,
bed capacity at both university hospitals is already highly constrained.
She explained that the hospitals are required not only to provide highly specialized medical services but also to handle emergency care needs for the entire Riga and Greater Riga region.
“It is no secret that for many years there has been discussion about the need for either another emergency hospital in Riga or a hospital capable of caring for patients who do not require tertiary-level medical services. We are critically lacking such a facility and such bed capacity. As a result, bottlenecks develop within the hospitals,” she said.
Although discussions on possible solutions are ongoing, Žentiņa said she is not aware of how far those talks have progressed.
Speaking about the hospital’s readiness for major crisis situations, she referred to the COVID-19 pandemic, when the hospital successfully managed a significant increase in patient numbers. However, she emphasized that
crisis situations operate under entirely different mechanisms.
“If a crisis situation arises, we are prepared to free up hospital capacity within a relatively short period of time in order to provide care for patients whose needs become far more urgent due to a crisis or other extraordinary event,” she said, urging people not to confuse routine overcrowding with emergency preparedness.
Meanwhile, Riga Mayor Viesturs Kleinbergs argued during the same programme that the shortage of beds for chronically ill patients began when the Ministry of Health closed Riga 1st Hospital in 2009. The facility currently operates as an outpatient clinic.
Kleinbergs said that the Health Care Coordination Council is expected to discuss the issue this week.
“I would remind everyone that access to healthcare ultimately depends on state funding,”
the mayor said, adding that if adequate financing becomes available, the private sector would also be willing to participate in addressing the problem.
As previously reported, ambulance crews often face lengthy delays outside PSKUS while waiting to transfer patients to hospital staff. At the beginning of June, one emergency medical team reportedly had to wait nearly two hours before handing over a patient. A similar situation occurred in March of last year.
PSKUS explained to LETA that patient flow problems at its Emergency Medical Centre are not solely related to the work of the emergency department itself but also to overall hospital occupancy levels, available bed capacity, and the complexity of patients’ medical conditions.
The hospital stressed that such situations should not be considered normal but acknowledged that they recur periodically during times of exceptionally high demand and an influx of complex cases.
PSKUS stated that it works regularly with the Ministry of Health and the State Emergency Medical Service to improve patient-flow management throughout the healthcare system. In the long term, hospital officials believe that
infrastructure development and closer cooperation across the healthcare sector will play a key role in addressing these challenges.
For her part, Liene Cipule, head of the State Emergency Medical Service (NMPD), told LETA that situations in which multiple ambulance crews are forced to wait simultaneously outside hospital emergency departments clearly demonstrate insufficient system readiness for crisis conditions.
According to Cipule, hospitals’ inability to admit patients promptly creates a systemic risk for the entire emergency care chain. Ambulance crews become delayed, response times worsen, and the likelihood increases that critically ill patients may not receive assistance quickly enough.
Cipule noted that NMPD has been proposing specific systemic solutions for several years. A draft Cabinet regulation has already been prepared that would require hospitals to take over responsibility for patients from ambulance crews within 15 minutes, or immediately in critical cases.
Unfortunately, the initiative has not progressed further, and as a result, the underlying problems remain unresolved, she said.
To eliminate these risks, Cipule argues that Latvia needs clear regulatory requirements, more effective management of hospital capacity, and stronger involvement from the Ministry of Health. Otherwise, queues outside hospitals and the associated threats to patient safety are likely to continue.
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