Elderly fit patients occupy hospital bed

ELDERLY patients who are fit to be discharged are occupying up to 600 public hospital beds daily at an annual cost of €100 million to the State and clogging up the health system.

Secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultant's Association (IHCA) Finbarr Fitzpatrick said the cost per bed per week was 3,500 10 times the cost of nursing home accommodation. Mr Fitzpatrick said it was unacceptable that elderly patients were forced to remain in hospital because of a severe shortage of post-acute beds, denying bed spaces to patients admitted through A&E or awaiting elective surgery. A spokesman for the Department of Health said the pressure would be alleviated with new beds due under the National Health Strategy, but of 709 beds due in the system by the end of the year, only 258 have come on stream to date.

The spokesman said 600 would be in service by the end of the year and the remainder early next year.

Mr FItzpatrick said it was becoming a huge source of concern to hospital consultants that they were coming under pressure to discharge patients unfit to be sent home because of the bed pressures caused by lack of suitable

accommodation for fit elderly patients.

"The majority of the patients occupying beds unnecessarily are elderly and incapable of independent living, but could be discharged if they had a home-help, nursing home or rehabilitation facilities. Many of them are in hospital for several months without needing to be there. In some instances, they can be in hospital for up to a year."

Mr Fitzpatrick said the knock-on

effect was that people admitted through A&E were spending up to 72 hours on a trolley and persons on waiting lists for elective surgery could not get a bed.

"It's nothing short of a scandal that there are hundreds in hospital who don't need to be there, while on the other side of the coin, there are thousands trying to get in and can't."

Earlier this month at the AGM of the IHCA, Professor Ronan O'Connell, consultant surgeon at the Mater Hospital, said that high bed-occupancy rates by the elderly was leading to Third World conditions in A&E. He said they had a situation last week where 105 beds at the Mater were occupied by patients fit for medical discharge.

A&E chief in Cork University Hospital Dr Stephen Cusack said their experience was the same. Mr Fitzpatrick said the inability to discharge patients because of a shortage of post-acute beds was costing the State between 75 and 100 million annually.

"We would urge the Government to implement the National Health Strategy (NHS) which promises more post-acute beds. Our major worry is that it will be hit by health cuts. We need more nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities to get people not in need of hospital care out."