Elderly must not become ‘political football’, warns HSE chief

POLITICIANS must stop using the elderly as a political football and develop a comprehensive care policy for them, Health Service Executive chief executive Professor Brendan Drumm warned yesterday.

Speaking at Fine Gael’s parliamentary party meeting in Portlaoise, Prof Drumm said it was irresponsible of politicians to blame bed shortages on elderly patients.

“I have also stressed the importance of this country developing a policy for the care of the elderly; that it doesn’t become a political football.

“Talking about patients bed blocking to my mind is a gross insult to elderly people who are being left inappropriately in hospital beds because we have no policy as to how to move them on in the system,” he said.

The HSE chief executive warned that failure to drastically reform elderly care would see a continuation of the current problems in the nation’s health system.

“I was stressing that we as a country have to develop a policy about how we care for our elderly because if we don’t our hospital system will suffer. . . and that demands a little bit of bravery from all politicians so they don’t use it as a means of attacking one another.

“This population in the next 30 or 40 years is going to age significantly and in terms of its age profile we need to start dealing with that,” he said.

Challenged on the prospect of another harsh winter with patients lining up on trolleys, Prof Drumm refused to promise immediate results, saying there was no way systems could be improved quickly enough to solve the A&E crisis this year.

Instead he promised a system over time that is more accessible and easier to provide.

“You are certainly talking of a time frame that is going to extend over my entire five years in this post but issues will come on line throughout that period so that by five years time we will, I hope, have challenged a lot of what’s wrong with the system at the moment,” he said.