Patients at risk - Warning on Fair Deal shortfalls

WE’VE never done long-term planning as well as we might like and yesterday, when he spoke to the Oireachtas health committee, HSE director general Tony O’Brien flagged another area of growing concern.

Mr O’Brien gave a forceful warning about about growing waiting lists and waiting times for the Fair Deal nursing home scheme — some of which stretch to 20 weeks, he told the committee.

Describing the scheme, which cares for about 20,000 older people, as the “Achilles heel” of the health services and is putting patients’ health at risk, he warned that the additional €25m allocated in the budget will lose its impact at the end of this month. He also outlined how this bottleneck is forcing more sick people onto hospital trollys. We have a growing and an ageing population and this situation needs to be resolved as entire families can be caught up in the difficulties old age and sickness bring. It is hard to think that a solution to this unavoidable problem is beyond our reach. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll find an answer.