Beaumont Hospital has 54 on trolleys as nursing home beds idle

Overcrowding in the emergency department of Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital has hit record levels, while a short distance away 82 nursing home beds lie idle because of a fees dispute.

Some 54 patients were on trolleys or in wards at Beaumont yesterday as the surge in post-Christmas attendances continued. A number of patients reported waiting on chairs for over 24 hours before a bed became available.

The hospital, which has asked people not to come to the emergency department unless absolutely necessary, said it was seeing a high volume of older people, many with respiratory or flu symptoms.

Backlog

One of the main reasons for the backlog in admitting patients is the delay in discharging well patients, and this in turn is due to a shortage of stepdown beds.

Yet a €12 million purpose-built new private nursing home at Cloghran, near Swords, lies virtually empty due to the failure of its operators, AnovoCare, and the National Treatment Purchase Fund to agree a price for patients in the Fair Deal scheme.

Talks between the two sides have been deadlocked since last July, with the fund offering a fee of €1,150 per patient a week and AnovoCare holding out for €1,200.

“We are five minutes away from Beaumont Hospital and currently have 82 empty nursing home beds available at a time when they have to close the A&E department due to overcrowding,” said Peter Purcell, managing director of AnovoCare.

The only occupants of the unit at present are seven private patients paying over €1,200 a week for their care from their own resources.

Mr Purcell said it defied economic reasoning that the company had reached a stalemate with the NTPF in offering beds at a rate of €1,200 a week while patients “clog up” hospital acute care beds at a cost of €6,000 a week.He said AnovoCare was not in a position to accept the NTPF’s offer because it represented too low a return on investment and would leave the company exposed in the event of a further increase in the minimum wage.

Cost norms

The NTPF said prices were set using a commercially negotiated process based on strict criteria, benchmark prices and cost norms. AnovoCare was the only one of 197 negotiations that did not result in agreement last year, according to a spokesman.

Nationally, the trolley crisis eased slightly yesterday, when the number of patients waiting to be admitted fell to 473, from 558 the previous day.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the situation was not satisfactory but noted it was better than last year.

He said the Government would continue to develop the economy so “medical personnel to have the best facilities to look after their patients”.