A 68-BED hospital in Dingle which has lain idle for almost two years can now open for patients after the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) granted registration to the new facility.
The west Kerry community hospital, Ospidéal Pobail Chorca Dhuibhne in Dingle was completed in December 2008 at a cost of €16.4 million and is part of a health “campus” which includes some primary care facilities, and an ambulance base.
The HSE yesterday welcoming the news announced a transfer date of October 27th for over 40 patients from the existing famine-era St Elizabeth’s hospital.
The delay in opening the new beds, while necessary registration was requested and completed, was incomprehensible to many including public representatives and the families of west Kerry patients waiting to transfer from St Elizabeth’s.
The registration difficulty arose because the new hospital, on land donated for the benefit of the community by Shane and Maura O’Connor, had been designed and completed before July 2009 when the Hiqa standards for new residential units for the elderly for the building came into being.
The HSE had long maintained the hospital was built to the highest standards and noted yesterday that no major cost factors would be needed to comply with registration.
Yesterday, local Fine Gael councillor Séamus Cosai Fitzgerald said at last “common sense has prevailed” and patients could transfer to facilities that were out of this world to most people. The delay had caused unnecessary hardship to staff and to families of those waiting, he said.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly also said he was pleased to see Hiqa now taking a sensible approach to allow the HSE begin moving patients from the old hospital. “It could not go on that patients were kept in conditions described as ‘Dickensian’ while a brand new facility lay idle.” It is the first public residential care facility to be formally registered in Kerry.
In a statement issued by the HSE, local health manager for Kerry Michael Fitzgerald said: “It is a great relief to have the registration process completed and that the requested number of beds put forward for registration have been granted.”
Initially some 46 patients will be transferred, as planned during the summer. Part of the registration condition is that the HSE will have to review occupancy levels within a two-year period, Mr Fitzgerald noted.
The report, published on the Hiqa website found good standards of care and in particular found that use of Irish by local staff at the existing St Elizabeth’s was hugely important for Irish-speaking residents.
Among Hiqa concerns were issues of privacy in the public lounge areas, en-suite facilities, handrails in the courtyard and garden area, and security doors.