Health inspectors urge homes to tag dementia sufferers

HEALTH inspectors have asked nursing homes to tag dementia patients with an electronic monitoring system, so they can’t wander outside, the owner of one premises has revealed.

Blair’s Hill Nursing Home, Sunday’s Well, Cork, breached several care regulations when inspected in April, a Health Service Executive (HSE) report found.

Among concerns raised was “securing the home against the risk of mobile patients with dementia wandering” from the facility, which has been an “ongoing” issue there since February 2006.

Early that year, a resident “absconded” from the home. Despite alarms later placed on all exits, the HSE said another patient suffering from dementia in September last left the home and was found in the car park. The home’s alarm system was deemed “inadequate“. The most recent inspection found a fire exit was not alarmed.

Co-owner Josephine O’Brien revealed her shock at being asked to electronically tag elderly residents. Such a drastic method to stop them leaving the home was only used on criminals, she said.

“When we took over the running of the nursing home, there were no alarms in place, so we physically alarmed every door. The lady who does the inspections wanted us to tag our elderly residents with dementia. Like the things a criminal would use, you put it around their ankle or around their wrist. Like the tags in a shop, so when you go through a door stealing something, it would go off, an electronic tag.”

The lady with dementia who had gone into the car park had wanted to go to Mass, but had never left the home’s grounds, stressed Ms O’Brien. The alarm system in place now to stop patients in the 38-bed facility wandering was “extremely effective“, added Ms O’Brien.

In 2005, 76-year-old Maura Reynolds went missing from the Tara Nursing Home, in Bray, Wicklow. She had spent Christmas Day with her family and returned to the home. Despite a massive search in the area, the Donegal-born grandmother was never found.

In Scotland, there was mixed reaction to suggestions in April by the science minister that elderly people with dementia could be tagged and have their movements monitored by satellite to give them and their carers more freedom.

Health campaigners suggested the proposal was inhumane.

The HSE admitted a number of homes are using tags as monitoring systems. A spokeswoman said the tags are not satellite-linked and differ from those used to monitor criminals. “It’s becoming good practice where patients with dementia are wandering off. It’s a safety precaution where a beep goes off when the patient passes a certain door. It’s in use in parts of the country, but it is not official HSE policy.”