Nursing unions warn of hospital bed closures

NURSING unions are forecasting further hospital bed closures as health boards struggle to stay within budget in the face of soaring overtime bills.

More than €15 million in overtime has been paid out by health boards to nursing staff for the first six months of the year. The pay-out does not include the major Dublin hospitals such as Beaumont, St Vincent’s and the Mater, who have their own payment structure. The Northern Area Health Board (NAHB) had the highest pay-out of €3.6 million.

INO representative Colette Mullins said overtime costs were set to go through the roof because of a growing dependency on agency nurses resulting from a Government cap on recruitment to the health service.

“Basically the Department of Health carried out a census in December, 2002, and hospitals and health boards were told they could not employ above the numbers recorded on the day of the census.

“Therefore, if hospitals need more staff, they cannot recruit either temporary or permanent nurses above the complement approved following the census. It means they have to rely on agency nurses for overtime and, if this continues, it will send hospitals way over budget and lead to more bed closures.”

Bed closures at Beaumont Hospital caused a crisis in A&E at the weekend. The hospital had closed 45 beds of a total of 660 last May, but had to re-open 18 at the weekend as 42 patients waited for beds on trolleys and chairs. Ten people were still waiting for beds yesterday evening. SIPTU's national nursing official, Oliver Donoghue, warned that nurses at the hospital were contemplating some form of industrial action if they failed to get results they wanted at a meeting with management today.

Fine Gael health spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell said it was completely counter-productive to depend on agency nurses to staff beds. “It would be far better to have permanent nurses on the payroll rather than going out in a panic and paying way over the odds for agency nurses.

“It means that between agency and overtime bills, hospitals are more likely to have spent over budget and are looking at further bed closures towards the end of the year.”

INO industrial relations chief Dave Hughes said it made no financial sense to employ agency nurses rather than offering permanent posts to student nurses. “An agency nurse costs as much as a staff nurse at the top of the pay scale and the hospital also has to pay the agency an extra 7%.”

He said none of the Dublin hospitals was currently recruiting permanent staff. He also accused the health boards that claimed they had no vacancies of ‘playing around with figures,’ saying that every health employer in the country was short of staff.