Hospitals’ use of nursing home beds to be cut
INO General Secretary Liam Doran said managers of Dublin’s leading acute hospitals, including Tallaght and the Mater, have blamed the latest A&E pressures on a reduction in the number of subvented beds: “We had more trouble in A&E last week with overcrowding and waiting times. After demanding meetings with management, one reasons we were given is that there has been a measurable slowdown by the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) in contracting beds.”
However, an ERHA spokeswoman said there should be no cutbacks because the subvention budget had not been slashed since last year: “Where some of the confusion arises is that, if someone dies, we don’t necessarily renew the contract on that bed. We seek the most suitable bed for the next patient, which may be different depending on the level of dependency.”
Mr Doran was critical of a proposal by Beaumont Hospital to return nursing home patients to hospital beds as a cost-cutting exercise. He said, even if such patients required less tests and a lower level of nursing care, they normally occupied beds for longer periods, adding to bed-blocking and overcrowding problems. Beaumont has overcrowding problems despite nearby empty nursing home beds.
Matron of Leas Cross in Swords, Gráinne Conway, said they had 53 empty beds at a cost of 750 beds a week, significantly less than the cost of a hospital bed which the Irish Hospital Consultants (IHCA) Association puts at 6,000 per week. The IHCA said the effects of the Beaumont proposal, contained in the hospital’s operational plan for 2003, would be catastrophic.
“I can’t see how it would save money. Even if it’s only one patient, it will block beds. I fail to see how Beaumont could save money implementing these kind of plans,” said assistant secretary general Dónal Duffy.
However the hospital yesterday played down the leaked memo of cost-cutting measures contained in the operational plan, which included suggestions to curtail kidney dialysis and cancer services. A statement from chief executive John Lamont said: “Patients and staff should know that the hospital, in seeking to contain its costs, will always prioritise savings in areas which do not directly impact on services to patients.”
He said the memo was prepared as a discussion document only, for consideration by senior hospital staff, in the run-up to formal negotiations with the Eastern Regional Health Authority on the hospital’s service plan.
