Sir, – The very real possibility that thousands of beds in our State-run nursing homes face closure as a result of the Health Information and Quality Authority's enforcement of their new accommodation standards sets the stage for a winter of serious crisis in our already crumbling health services ("Hiqa adopts 'get tough' stance on nursing homes", Front Page, August 4th).
This, together with the fact that the upgrading of the country’s State-run nursing homes does not even feature in the priority list of five capital projects drawn up by the Minister for Health, means that there is no light at all on the horizon for those who will need to access nursing home beds in the immediate future. There is already a significant shortage of nursing home and step-down beds nationally.
The current problem will, I propose, pale into insignificance when the full impact of the closure of nursing home beds now being forced by Hiqa becomes evident.
My mother was admitted into a public extended care nursing home bed in 2007 in a public voluntary hospital in Dublin. She has Alzheimer’s disease.
After caring for her myself, alone and at home, for six years, her advancing dementia meant that she eventually needed the 24-hour nursing and medical care that I accessed for her in a hospital that has a rich tradition of providing extended care since 1743.
She currently resides in a new ward which opened in 2009. She receives the very highest standards of nursing and medical care. We could not ask for better.
The Health Information and Quality Authority does not approve of the multiple occupancy rooms in which patients there are cared for. Consequently, patients and their families were informed in May that, as a result of this, there will be no further new admission to the extended care wards in the hospital. When patients pass away, they will not be replaced.
This applies to 66 extended care beds in this hospital alone.
Ireland is slowly emerging from the worst economic downturn in its history. Our health services suffered tremendously.
The hospital where my mother resides has done incredibly well to maintain services and standards for its residents throughout the recession.
Now, as Ireland recovers and begins to experience some growth and stability, this new crisis looms.
Our elderly citizens deserve the very highest standards of nursing home care. But surely nursing homes where such excellent standards of care are being provided should not have to face such dramatic and tragic sanctions because Hiqa does not approve of their multiple occupancy rooms.
If standards of care are good, and patients and their families are happy with this care, these nursing homes should be allowed to continue to provide extended care.
The failure to prioritise the upgrading of State-run nursing homes is a major failure on the part of our Government and it must change. It is not an option, it is a necessity. It is our elderly citizens who are currently waiting for a nursing home bed, and those who will be in this position in the near future, who will suffer as a direct result of this failure.
The problem is already at crisis point. The actions of the Health Information and Quality Authority will now serve to compound this problem massively and unnecessarily. – Yours, etc,
Dr BERNADETTE BRADY,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.