Elderly patients are still needlessly spending months in acute hospital beds because the Health Service Executive has run out of money to place them in nursing homes, it was claimed yesterday.
Fine Gael's Dublin South TD Olivia Mitchell said she was aware of an 83-year-old woman in St Vincent's Hospital who could have been discharged six months ago to a nursing home bed if the HSE would pay for it.
This would have been a much cheaper option, she said, than keeping the patient in St Vincent's where the weekly cost of a bed was €7,896.
"It is no wonder that the health service bill has escalated to over €16 billion and there is precious little to show for that huge expenditure," she said.
"The irony of the situation is that a nursing home bed has been identified and is available, but the nursing home section of the HSE has no money to pay for it," she added.
Ms Mitchell said it was unknown how many operations were postponed or how many nights were spent by patients on trolleys since last July because acute hospital beds were inappropriately occupied.
Labour's health spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan said she was aware of a patient in a bed in St Vincent's who could have been discharged 10 months ago to a nursing home but wasn't because "funds from the relevant budget subhead had been used up" in the HSE.
Significant numbers of patients are also fit for discharge at other Dublin hospitals but are awaiting funding from the HSE for nursing home beds. Despite this the HSE Dublin/Mid-Leinster region issued an instruction last month to cease recycling delayed discharge initiative beds being used in private nursing homes.
The HSE said this was because it was opening a significant number of new public nursing home beds. Some had already opened at Cherry Orchard in Dublin and over the next 12 months it hopes to open another 860 across the State.