Five Local Nursing Homes in the wider Lucan area currently have 51 vacant nursing home beds while 3 of the major Dublin hospitals are bursting at the seams and are less than 10 miles from each of the local facilities, in some cases taking people out of their immediate communities and confining them to inappropriate placements in hospital beds, arrangements that are more suitable for short term stays.

 

What is even more shocking is that the cost of keeping someone in a hospital bed who could be accommodated more comfortably in one of our local nursing home facilities is approx. €7,000 per week as opposed to that of €1,100 in a local nursing home. If our local nursing homes were to accommodate 51 hospital patients requiring the type of long term care that a nursing home can provide in the vacant beds we currently have, the saving to the Health Services Executive and to the tax payer would be Euro 15.5million per year. That is just for 51 people in a 4 mile radius. Nationally the tax payer could be saved Euro 125m in a single year should these patients be taken out of our hospitals.

 

These figures are staggering. Previously, when numbers in A & E reached crisis point, the HSE would contact local nursing homes and take out contracts at nursing home prices to accommodate people requiring long stay care thus freeing up hospital beds required for more acute cases. Now these vulnerable people are being left in hospital beds with no hope of getting back into the community and the one single excuse we keep hearing in answer to our demands for better investment in the long term care
sector......the HSE has no money!.

 

Clearly from the very small snapshot above of our area alone, the HSE has money and is investing it unwisely. I no longer accept this as an excuse.

The knock on effect of the HSE's actions are then felt by all, as normal hospital in-patient services are compromised and people requiring these services in some cases have to turn to the National Treatment Purchase Fund and travel abroad for procedures, or attend expensive private clinics here. This places a further burden on the Irish tax-payer.

 
In February of this year, Health Minister Mary Harney T.D. told the Dáil that the HSE is "addressing the issue of delayed discharges through a combination of increased investment in alternatives to acute hospital stay and improvements in the discharge planning process at hospital level".

 

I say to Minister Harney “it is time to stop wasting tax payer’s money and it is time to treat our elderly with the respect that they deserve””