Donnelly defends plan to move patients to first available nursing home bed

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has endorsed plans by the HSE for patients who have been medically discharged to be moved to the first available nursing home bed even if it is in a location far from family and friends.

Speaking on both RTE radio’s Morning Ireland and Newstalk Breakfast, Mr Donnelly said it was “absolutely the right thing to do” to move a patient who had been medically discharged to a clinically appropriate nursing home.

If this did not happen then other patients would remain on trolleys as the bed was not available.

“I 100 per cent stand over it, it is essential,” he said.

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Mr Donnelly also welcomed the increase in applications for GP training and said the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) deserved great credit for their efforts to recruit GPs from other countries to take up positions in practices around the country.

“As you’ll be aware, we’ve been increasing the number of GP training places over the last number of years. We’ve actually gone from about 120 places back in 2009. Next year that would be at 350. So 287 this year, 350 next year. Last year we had less than a thousand medical graduates apply for the GP training places, which was still a large number until we’ve gone up now from about 1,300,” he said.

“It’s really great to see. And what I think it reflects is a growing appetite in general practice.

“We’ve seen GPs becomes more and more central to community care over the last year. They did an extraordinary job during Covid. They’re leading on free contraception, new medical services and chronic disease management services for their patients, access to diagnostics and more.

“It’s really encouraging to see because we know we need a lot more GPs. Some parts in the country are doing fine, but other parts, particularly more rural areas, people are really struggling to get a GP.

So that’s our focus to increase the number of GPs, an increasing number of training places, increase the supports we provide to GPs to do such a good job right around the country.

Mr Donnelly said that for every two GPs retiring, there were “three to six” new GPs entering practice.