Nursing home problems revealed ‘unacceptable’, says Varadkar

Recent reports of inadequate standards in nursing homes by the health watchdog Hiqa are "unacceptable", Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has said.

Speaking ahead of his address to the MacGill summer school in Glenties, Co Donegal, Mr Varadkar said the problems in nursing homes and care centres were "not new ones".

“They must have been going on for decades, the difference now is that people actually care,” he said.

“We have standards, we have inspections and those inspections are published on the world wide web and people are then required to act and that is actually improving standards over time.”

In a report published on Thursday, Health Information and Quality Authority inspectors criticised the Sacred Heart Hospital nursing home in Roscommon, which is run by the HSE, for providing inadequate access to showers and toilets for vulnerable residents.

It is the second publicly-run home to face criticism this week from health authorities.

On Tuesday, Hiqa reported that some residents at a HSE-run home in Co Leitrim home had not had a bath or shower for over a month.

Mr Varadkar said staffing levels were being increased across the health service.

He said there were a thousand more people working in the health service than at this time last year and that record numbers of consultants and midwives were employed.

“We’re now embarking on a major nurse recruitment campaign because our numbers are really down on nursing and need to be improved.”

Some 500 extra nurses would be recruited this year, the Minister added.

“But, you know, safety and quality isn’t all about staffing. Anyone who saw the documentary about Áras Attracta for example will see that it was a very well-staffed facility where patients, residents rather, weren’t safe, so I think it’s a big mistake if we concede that idea, that more staff equals better care, it doesn’t necessarily. It’s about quality, in-training and standards.”

Mr Varadkar said the Hiqa reports publisheed in the last couple of days were “very disappointing – they’re unacceptable in fact”.

“But I think we need to remember that I think in the past year or so there have been about 500 individual Hiqa reports.

"The public have only probably heard about 10 or 20 of those, because those are the ones that were bad. And I wouldn't like people to think that those bad reports reflect the standard of health care and social care in Ireland. They don't; they are the bad ones," Mr Varadkar said.

The Roscommon report found residents of the nursing home were forced to use commodes or be assisted over long distances to wheelchair-accessible toilets or showers due to inadequate facilities.

In common with an inspection report into a HSE-run home in Leitrim earlier this week, the Sacred Heart Hospital was found to suffer from staff shortages, particularly in the evening and at night time.