‘Nursing home place ready but we are waiting for HSE call’

ANNE WALSH and her family are waiting.

Waiting for a phone call which, it seems, will never come.

Ms Walsh’s 89-year-old mother has been living in a hospital bed for the past six months because she is waiting for a nursing home bed.

The bed is ready – in Gormanstown, not far from the family home – but the Balbriggan woman cannot access it due to a lack of HSE funding.

That simple phone call hasn’t come, and Ms Walsh fears it won’t for another few months at least.

Meanwhile, her mother languishes in a hospital bed. “I just can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” Ms Walsh says.

“If they could at least tell us when the funding will be made available. But not knowing and waiting is terrible.”

According to Ms Walsh, staff at the hospital do all they can for her mother, but it is a far from ideal environment for an elderly person suffering from dementia.

“My mother’s movement is really limited – she gets from the bed to the bathroom. Her walking is getting worse – she has to have someone with her all the time now. If she was in a nursing home she would be up and about and getting physiotherapy.

“There is no stimulation in hospital and that does not help her dementia. She has not been dressed in her clothes since January.”

Unfortunately, this is not a one-off case. There are 122 entitled “delayed discharges” at Beaumont hospital.

Most recent HSE figures show there were 893 people – mainly in Dublin hospitals – awaiting onward care at the end of April.

While in the past the problem has been attributed to the lack of beds in the public system, this time it seems to be directly due of a lack of funding. “I’ve been told by the hospital that there was funding given in December to move people out of the system before Christmas,” says Ms Walsh.

“They don’t know when the next round is coming. The nursing home bed is ready and waiting for my mother but we are just waiting for that phone call from the HSE.”

She feels it is the most vulnerable in society who are being targeted for cuts or delays in funding.

“My parents worked all their lives and paid their taxes. It just seems that the HSE does not care. If you don’t look after the old it really says something about society.”