HSE looking to rent or buy facilities in bid to free up hospital beds

THE Health Service Executive (HSE) is looking to rent or purchase facilities from the private sector which will be used to house patients needlessly taking up beds in hospitals.

The move is designed to ease pressure on A&E departments, which suffer most when hospital beds are unavailable. The bed crisis creates backlogs throughout hospitals, and leads to in-patients using and waiting on trolleys.

The HSE is seeking expressions of interest from owners of nursing home facilities in Dublin which can accommodate 30 persons or more.

But a HSE official said yesterday that all offers of accommodation would be considered, provided they met size requirements. The accommodation, it was indicated, did not have to be “ready made” to cater for patients.

Facilities under development and existing facilities which could be extended will all be considered.

The HSE hopes to secure sufficient accommodation to provide for 1,100 nursing care beds.

Delayed discharge patients — persons who no longer need acute hospital care but are taking up beds because they don’t have anywhere else to go — would be accommodated in the facilities.

The HSE is seeking the facilities in Dublin, where bed blockage problems are most severe.

The official was unable to say if the scheme would be extended to the rest of the country in due course. The HSE did not disclose the likely budget for the scheme, stating figures would not be determined until property offers were submitted and reviewed.

The deadline for offers is August 31.

Although there is a lack of comprehensive data on bed blockages, consultants Tribal Secta, in a report for the HSE on A&E efficiency, said it was not unusual “to find lengths of stay well over a year in an acute hospital because of lack of appropriate alternative settings”.