When it was announced last month that St Anne’s nursing home in Charlestown was to close down after 40 years of service, it represented a seismic social upheaval for its residents, its staff and the wider community. Its closure also marked the 32nd such closure of a nursing home in 18 months, and the loss of almost a thousand beds in the sector.
Its director explained that the closure came as a result of underfunding and overregulation, a constant struggle to meet rising costs while living within the same restricted budget provided under the Fair Deal scheme. More accurately, she described a lack of joined-up thinking between the funders, the regulators, and ultimately, the wider Health service.
And it is precisely that lack of joined-up thinking that has left the public health service in the chaotic condition it now finds itself in.
There is no strategic, overarching plan; no sense of cohesion between the different strands of health care; each individual element is treated in isolation. And each fire is extinguished in panic without regards to the conflagrations running wild at the other ends of the system.
Last week it was revealed that 6,500 people were on the waiting list for Home Help services, which are in dire supply; acute hospital beds are occupied by patients waiting discharge into step-down and nursing home beds, if nursing home beds were not closing down at such a rapid rate; the quantum of elderly and dependent people in the population is due to soar into the next decade. It hardly needs a social scientist to join the dots to realise that the shortage of nursing-home beds is a speeding train coming in the wrong direction.
The loss of nursing-home services within a community is much wider and deeper than can be measured in terms of jobs lost or reduced economic activity.
To close a nursing home is to inflict severe emotional distress on residents and their families and loved ones. For many, it may mean being moved away from the local community in which they have lived all their lives. It leads to a curtailment of contact with visitors, friends and family and familiar faces. It means upheaval and trauma at the very time of life when security and sanctuary should be paramount.
A recent Nursing Homes Ireland-commissioned PwC survey of the nursing home sector revealed that one-third of nursing homes surveyed were operating at a loss in 2022, as opposed to five years earlier, when they were all operating on a sustainable level. It hardly needs stating that nobody is in business to make a loss, so that further closures – particularly of small, rural nursing homes – seem inevitable.
The ESRI has estimated that a further 10,000 extra nursing home beds will be needed by 2030 – a figure that should strike fear into any elected politician capable of seeing further than the next election.
Nursing homes, and their survival, should be seen for what they are – an integral part of the whole wide sweep of health care and health delivery. If the Fair Deal funding is lagging so far behind the real costs incurred by nursing homes, as nursing home owners claim, then a realistic revamp is needed to save the system from total meltdown. In an economy as awash with financial resources as we are led to believe, it would be shortsighted beyond belief were we not to invest in a sector of such crucial importance.
Our population is ageing at the fastest rate in Europe; our nursing homes are battling a financial crisis; the number of available beds is facing collapse.
Another fire to be put out?

QOSHE - Nursing home crisis a ticking time bomb - John Healy
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Nursing home crisis a ticking time bomb

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30.06.2023



When it was announced last month that St Anne’s nursing home in Charlestown was to close down after 40 years of service, it represented a seismic social upheaval for its residents, its staff and the wider community. Its closure also marked the 32nd such closure of a nursing home in 18 months, and the loss of almost a thousand beds in the sector.
Its director explained that the closure came as a result of underfunding and overregulation, a constant struggle to meet rising costs while living within the same restricted budget provided under the Fair Deal scheme. More accurately, she described a lack of joined-up thinking between the funders, the regulators, and ultimately, the wider Health service.
And it is precisely that lack of joined-up thinking that has left the public health service in the chaotic condition it now finds itself in.
There is no strategic,........

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