Charity: Private care would be bad for sector

A SIGNAL from the Health Service Executive (HSE) that it may hand over nursing and home care responsibilities to the private sector will serve to further destabilise and undermine the sector, a campaigning charity has warned.

Dermot Kirwan of Friends of the Elderly was responding to comments made by the HSE’s head of communications, Paul Connors, who said the health body would explore the possibility of private nursing homes running new facilities on its behalf.

Mr Kirwan said if this was the case the financial viability of private nursing home and home care firms operating in Ireland must be tested to ensure people are not left without adequate care.

He pointed to the financial collapse of Britain’s largest prov-ider of care for the elderly, Southern Cross, which slipped into insolvency last week and now depends on the British government for survival.

It owns 750 nursing homes and is responsible for the care of 31,000 elderly people.

“In view of the HSE’s policy of giving the private sector a greater role in the nursing home and home care sector we need to be confident that private care companies have not taken on too much debt in order to win HSE contracts,” Mr Kirwan said.

He called on the HSE to test the financial viability of private companies operating in the sector.

“Financial stress testing of all private providers who are hopeful of HSE care contracts must be done as a matter of urgency, and should be the responsibility of [the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA)], who are already doing a good job inspecting the quality of care in nursing homes.

“Many Irish nursing homes are franchises and have taken on huge loans in the hope of getting ‘HSE business’,” he said.

“They bought expensive nursing homes at the top end of the boom and are carrying massive debts. They need to run at full capacity to make a profit. Many are not financially viable.”

Mr Kirwan pointed to increasing costs in the sector such as those caused by new HIQA standards and regulations.

He said inadequate and uncertain HSE funding had put the Fair Deal scheme at risk and that doubts over the level of future HSE funding is having repercussions across the sector.