Martin to free-up 600 hospital beds

HEALTH Minister Micheál Martin has said he will free-up 600 hospital beds to help alleviate the crisis in A&E wards.

As the furore over bed shortages continued yesterday, Mr Martin said health boards had contingency funds to source these extra beds in nursing homes, insisting there were no cutbacks in that service.

The Eastern Regional Health Authority (EHRA) was given an extra 40 million last year to pay for nursing home subvention and an extra €1 million emergency fund in December, Mr Martin said.

However, the minister said allocating extra funds was not the solution.

"Providing funding to move people from 600 acute hospital beds will not solve this ongoing problem it is just not as simple as that. Nursing homes may not take all these patients and it is too simplistic to think some

short-term relief will sort out a crisis that has occurred repeatedly at this time of the year," Mr Martin said. The overall solution, he said, lies in the full implementation of the radical reform of hospital admissions and discharge policies agreed following the A&E nurses' strike last March.

Opposition parties yesterday rounded on the Government for the growing crisis in the health service. Fine Gael health spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell said 600 patients nationwide, who do not need acute hospital beds, could be transferred to nursing homes if health boards would provide the funds to contract out the beds.

However, she said recent health board cutbacks resulted in the cancellation of more than 50 contract nursing home beds in the Dublin area alone. "There are 600 vacant nursing home beds nationwide 250 in the Dublin that could be contracted immediately to release acute hospital beds for emergencies. Can the minister not see that his inaction and false economies are simply making things worse?" Deputy Mitchell said.

The Labour Relations Commission will hold a special meeting later this week to discuss the A&E crisis in the Eastern region. The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) sought the emergency meeting after the ERHA was forced to ask the public not to attend A&E services unless it was absolutely necessary. INO deputy general secretary Dave Hughes said nurses were concerned the overcrowding was dangerous for both patients and staff.