Nursing home stopped from charging residents for upkeep

The State’s health services watchdog had to stop some private nursing homes from charging residents additional fees to keep their facilities up to standard, a Dáil committee was told.

Officials from the Health Information and Quality Authority appeared for the first time before the Public Accounts Committee yesterday.

Fianna Fáil TD Bobby Aylward said there had been a lot of publicity about extra charges being imposed by nursing homes and he asked if Hiqa monitored them.

Hiqa’s director of regulation and chief inspector of social services, Mary Dunnion, said they were concerned about the additional charges, but did not have a specific role in that area.

Ms Dunnion said the authority was helping the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to develop guidelines for services charged by nursing homes.

Hiqa is reviewing its statement of purpose to see what charges could be included, so as to make them more transparent.

Ms Dunnion said that, on a number of occasions, inspectors had concerns about additional charges made by nursing homes.

“For example, our inspectors were in a series of places where there was a Hiqa charge on residents. There is no Hiqa charge, so that was stopped,” she said.

“We bring it to the attention of the provider, if we have concerns, but we don’t have a regulatory remit and we are not a financial regulator.”

The guidelines being developed by the CCPC will set out the obligations and responsibilities placed on service providers, under the European Communities (Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts) Regulations.

Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald asked if Hiqa should have a function in respect of costs or charges. Ms Dunnion said she did not think so, because Hiqa was not a financial regulator.

Ms Dunnion also told the committee that just 15 people worked in Hiqa’s healthcare section.

“Healthcare is not a regulated service; we only have a monitoring function,” she said. “We have no powers within the Health Act, or in healthcare, to do anything in the context of implementation.”

She said the responsibility for service-provision rested with those that funded and delivered the service.

Earlier, Hiqa’s chief executive, Phelim Quinn, said they were responsible for monitoring the safety and quality of health services and for investigating, as necessary, serious concerns about the health and welfare of people who use them.

Because the healthcare team was small, they had focused on inspecting nutrition and hydration care in hospitals and had reviewed how public acute hospitals tackled anti- microbial stewardship and medicines-management.

Mr Quinn said the team also monitored acute hospitals’ compliance with national standards for the prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections.

Committee chairman, Sean Fleming, said people erroneously believed Hiqa had a role in policing hospitals, but that was not the case.

“My first question, this morning, would have been how you stood over the trolleys in accident and emergency, but I learned, during the course of the meeting, that had nothing to do with you,” said Mr Fleming.

Earlier, Mr Quinn said two-thirds of Hiqa’s expenditure went on staff costs, and that amounted to more than €14m last year.