Anne Harris has been at the centre of the Health Service Executive’s bid to make sure lessons are learned from Leas Cross.
Having met the families and residents affected by the abuses, one recommendation was the development of an advocacy programme for nursing home residents.
Harris is programme manager for the advocacy service, run by the independent agency Third Age. She also works part-time in the HSE’s complaints division.
So far, 250 volunteer advocates have been trained to resolve issues for residents in public and private nursing homes.
Harris says that, with ready availability of funds under the Fair Deal scheme, nursing homes became the default referral option for some hospitals, rather than assisting older people to resume living independently.
She is currently dealing with a complaint from the daughter of an elderly man who had come into an emergency department with a “TIA” (transient ischemic attack) or mini-stroke. While the issue had resolved itself by 4pm that day, he was kept in for observation.
“Within a short time in hospital, he became confused and agitated,” says Harris, “but what was wrong with him is that he was constipated from being kept in bed.”
Administered psychotropic drugs, typically used to calm people, “it was a slippery slope then until he was admitted to a nursing home”, she says.
“Two years later, that man is still in a nursing home, perfectly well able to walk,” says Harris.
“He’s on a soft liquidised diet and there is no reason for him to be on it. Because Fair Deal money was there, it was a very easy solution for hospitals to get people out,” she says.
“I’m a nurse myself and I just feel, are we forgetting that patient care and compassion are so important?”
One woman in a Dublin nursing home had told her advocate her glasses were missing.
“It turned out her nephew had taken them for repair six months before. She was without them so she couldn’t read and her quality of life was diminished,” Harris says. “The advocate contacted the nephew and got them back.”
Another resident in a Mayo nursing home told her advocate she hadn’t seen her brother in 20 years. On investigation, the advocate discovered her brother was in another nursing home at the other end of the county.
“We have since facilitated visits between the two older people. That was a wonderfully positive thing to do,” says Harris.
She says one of the biggest flaws in monitoring nursing home quality is that the HSE can only deal with patient complaints in nursing homes it owns and runs.
Some 80 per cent of people covered by the Fair Deal scheme are in private nursing home care.
“If there is a complaint about a private nursing home, there is nobody to deal with that complaint.
“My remit is public nursing homes only,” says Harris of her HSE role.
While the Health Information and Quality Authority can inspect premises, it won’t look into an individual’s complaint, she says.
“We’re paying for these people under Fair Deal, so I cannot see how we don’t have the right to investigate a complaint.”
