State’s reaction to Covid-19 in nursing homes a ‘gigantic failure’, says TD
The State’s reaction to the Covid-19 outbreak in the nursing home sector has been described as “extraordinary”, “damning” and a “gigantic political failure of our elderly”.
At the Oireachtas special committee on Covid-19, it was revealed nursing homes were not discussed until the 12th meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) dealing with the outbreak, despite Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) “the voice of Irish nursing homes”, according to Minister for Health Simon Harris, being present at every meeting.
Ireland has 580 nursing homes with 31,000 residents. Of these, 114 homes are statutory — there are 5,708 people in HSE-funded centres. And of Ireland’s 1,606 deaths, 878 occurred in nursing homes (54.5%).
Hiqa CEO Phelim Quinn said the HSE “did not know this sector” and there are no formal governance links between the sector and the HSE, with no national clinical oversight of care.
This was flagged by Hiqa, which says they raised “on a number of occasions, issues we had with the regulatory framework and resent papers to the Department of Health as policymakers”, and did not receive any specific response.
Social Democrat Roisin Shortall added: “For probably the most vulnerable group of patients in the country, that is damning.”
Mary Dunnion from Hiqa said at the beginning of the pandemic the agency identified premises which would be challenged to deal with the outbreak and provided a “high-risk” list to the Department.
This list was not responded to other than the acknowledgement of it being received. In the first three months of the pandemic, more than 3,500 people were transferred from acute hospitals to nursing homes.
It is not known how many patients were tested for coronavirus before being moved.
People Before Profit TD, Brid Smith, said: “This is a gigantic political failure of our elderly. All are to blame here, HSE and Hiqa.”
Twenty of the 238 nursing homes inspected by Hiqa last year were not fully compliant with national standard, and have until Jan 2021 to become fully compliant. In terms of complaints, there were 28 concerns registered in March, 176 concerns in April, and 88 concerns so far in May from staff, family and residents.
Staff complaints related to the availability of PPE, infection control, and testing; from residents themselves, loneliness and isolation due to not seeing their families were the major concerns.
The committee also heard that regulations are “very weak” on staffing because staffing levels are allocated by the nursing home provider.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
