High price of keeping elderly in wrong beds

I REFER to the announcement last week by the Minister for Health that some money was being made available to fund the transfer of elderly patients from hospitals to nursing homes.

It was reported that the Eastern Region Health Authority (ERHA) had instructed hospitals to confine elderly patients currently occupying beds to a section of the hospital in order to reduce the cost of caring for them.

These patients, from a medical viewpoint, are capable of being discharged, but because the ERHA has not made suitable plans for their ongoing care they are forced to stay in hospital.

As well as being an inhuman way to treat the elderly, it is also a mismanagement of scarce financial resources. Based on this year’s budget for the five academic hospitals of 870 million, the cost of a hospital bed is approximately 6,500 per week. This compares with the cost of a nursing home of 700/750 per week, which provides the appropriate environment for such patients.

Media reports highlighted that the Mater lost 30,000 bed days in 2002 because beds were being used in this inappropriate manner. Based on the average length of stay for the surgical/medical mix of patients in the five academic teaching hospitals in Dublin, the Mater could cater for 4,500 additional admissions per annum for overdue surgical and medical interventions if these beds were available. No doubt the same story applies in the other hospitals, so it is not unreasonable to assume that if this ‘bed-blocking’ issue was resolved an additional 30,000 patients could be treated annually in the Dublin hospitals. Surely it is time to give the bed managers in hospitals the authority and the finance to address this misuse of medical facilities.

Pat Durcan,

193, New Cabra Road,

Dublin 7.