Harris commits to provide Covid-19 financial support and PPE to nursing homes

- Additional reporting by Aoife Moore

The Department of Health has committed to providing financial support to nursing homes to alleviate rising costs in the face of the current public health emergency.

Department officials are working on proposals to roll out a financial support scheme for private and voluntary nursing homes, following a meeting between Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) and Health Minister Simon Harris on Monday afternoon.

The meeting follows new official figures showing an increasing number of Covid-19 clusters in nursing homes across the country in the past week. On Sunday, March 22nd there were four Covid-19 clusters in nursing homes. This figure rose to 22 clusters in nursing homes by Friday, March 27th, with 20 in the east of the country and two in the north-east.

The financial aid package comes as Minister Harris signalled on Monday that new recommendations for care in nursing homes will be announced tomorrow after the "concerning" rise in infection clusters in the sector.

Minister Harris said: “It is a cause for concern, we've seen so many clusters of infection in nursing homes."

He added: "Tomorrow the national public health emergency team, chaired by the Chief Medical Officer, will bring forward recommendations for us to consider in relation to what we can do to respond to infection and the virus in the nursing home sector. How can we support them in terms of their staff, in terms of how they care for the patients, how can we care for the residents there, and crucially what do we need from them as well."

NHI, which represents over 450 private and voluntary nursing homes across the country, told Minister Harris that its members were facing increased costs, such as staffing and cleaning costs, as they to strive to protect residents and staff from Covid-19.

During the hour-long meeting, which was also attended by nursing home owners and staff, NHI CEO Tadgh Daly highlighted the additional costs being borne by the sector.

“We had an opportunity to outline to the Minister our concerns and the need to support the sector. We’d be hoping to see some progress on commitments made over the coming days to ensure the safety of residents and staff in the sector,” Mr Daly told the Irish Examiner.

“We announced visitor restrictions on March 6th because we were concerned that residents in nursing homes were a particularly vulnerable category. We’ve had concerns over the past number of weeks that the sector wasn’t getting the priority it needed. There has been an increasing number of clusters of residents with Covid-19 and that has probably focused the minds of the Minister and officials,” he added.

The financial scheme may see nursing homes availing of a Covid-19 “top-up payment” for every nursing home resident.

“The Minister gave a commitment to come back to us by the end of the week. Department officials are working on an outline on a financial support scheme for the nursing home sector,” Mr Daly said.

“Any financial support must be made available to all nursing homes because all nursing homes have taken significant action in the last number of weeks to increase staffing, increase cleaning, increase administration, and increase activities, and purchase more equipment,” he added.

Nursing homes impacted by Covid-19 outbreaks may also need additional support, he said, such as access to public health, multidisciplinary teams and gerontology staff.

At the meeting NHI also sought additional support for personal protective equipment or PPE, oxygen, and staff, in particular in facilities experiencing an outbreak of Covid-19.

The Minister also committed to assist the sector with PPE and oxygen supplies. Nursing homes can contact their local HSE office to access PPE supplies.

Nursing homes require additional nurses, carers, cleaning staff and administrators, he said, adding that nursing homes should have access to staff who volunteered through the ‘On Call for Ireland’ initiative.

He said: “This was ‘On Call for Ireland’ not ‘On Call for the HSE’ so if there are staff available through that national recruitment drive we would hope they can be made available to the sector.”