HSE standards - Dangerous risks for patients

On the very day that Health Minister Mary Harney introduced new guidelines on nursing home standards, the Government was accused of “chronic negligence” of elderly people, and faced a new controversy on illegal nursing home charges.

Also, she has sought a full inquiry into the death of a 14-year-old girl from the Health Executive Service (HSE), whose chief executive Brendan Drumm made an extraordinary admission.

It was to the effect that patients are not safe in the health service because of the level of overtime that doctors had to work.

This could be compounded if strike action is decided by 25,000 health workers, as IMPACT trade union ballots them over what they say are planned staff cuts in the health service.

In fact, he said hospital users faced a “significant risk” because non-consultant doctors worked as many as 114 hours per week.

It is not just a significant risk, it is positively dangerous.

It may not be judicious of the minister to have asked the HSE, as she has done, to make a full inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of a young Waterford girl from solvent inhalation.

Fine Gael TD John Deasy claimed that the HSE had failed to take the girl into care, although it had made arrangements to do so.

Maintaining that a considerable level of support was extended to the family, the HSE denied that at any time was residential care as an option ruled out.

While the HSE will be reviewing the case in line with their normal practice, it would be more appropriate that any inquiry be independent.

Altogether it was an inauspicious occasion for the minister’s new regulations to be announced, which were formulated after the appalling Leas Cross scandal. They are intended to govern public as well as private nursing homes, and will now be subjected to a three-month consultation period in which the regulations will be assessed and can be amended, if need be.

Ironically, Fine Gael’s Fergus O’Dowd read into the Dáil record the full details of a special Southern Health Board inquiry into a Cork nursing home and sent to the Department of Health in 2004. This concluded that the nursing home in question, which has since changed ownership, was in breach of 20 regulations or codes, and ill old people should not be referred to it. Consequently, the current Government proposals were “far too little and shamefully too late”.

Having rejected the allegation that the Government was warned but did nothing about that case, Minister Harney then had to contend with the fact that the Attorney General advised that health boards had no legal right for keeping the interest on millions of euro held for patients in long-stay facilities.

This opinion from the AG will recall the long-running controversy of patients who were illegally charged while in nursing homes, forcing the Government to refund them, or their estate, €1 billion.

It led to Age Action, a national network on ageing and older people, demanding an investigation by the HSE of how patients’ accounts were handled.

Obviously, the interest must be repaid, but in some cases there may be grounds for thinking that the money was used illicitly to refurbish patients’ rooms, which was the responsibility of the State.

If this happened, and can be proved, then those responsible must be held accountable where possible.