NURSING HOME owners say they will continue to charge residents a €190 inspection fee despite a warning from Minister for Health Mary Harney that the practice is in breach of official regulations.
At its annual conference yesterday, Nursing Homes Ireland, the main representative group for home owners, said it had little option except to pass on the fee to residents.
The group’s chief executive, Tadgh Daly, said many nursing homes were already struggling to stay afloat and the new fee could be the difference between “breaking even or going under”.
However, Ms Harney told delegates that she would take “grave exception” to the fee being passed on to residents.
She said official regulations drawn up under the Health Act 2007 state that fees are payable by the registered provider.
These fees are not due or payable by the resident or their family, she added.
These regulations also state that home owners are obliged to draw up an annual contract in conjunction with a resident, setting out the fees to be paid and services provided. Only the fees set out in the contract should be charged to the resident, she said.
This stance has been supported by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) – the body responsible for nursing home inspections – which said that only fees set out in a contract of care can be charged.
Commentators have pointed out, however, that there is nothing to stop a nursing home operator including the €190 charge in the overall cost of care when it agrees a new annual contract.
But Mr Daly has insisted that nursing home owners are continuing to receive mixed messages from the Department of Health and others on the issue.
Mr Daly said: “When the Minister launched the new care standards, she said she accepted it would be passed on. Now we hear from the National Treatment Purchase Fund that the fee will be part of the cost of a nursing home, and will be accounted for in the same way as heat or light.
“Clearly, it is part of the cost of running a nursing home. We’re trying to be transparent with residents and communicate this to residents. So we’re just raising overall fees; we’re billing out the fee structure associated with the new inspections regime.”
Ms Harney has said there are no mixed messages and has taken the unusual step of publishing correspondence between her department and Nursing Homes Ireland, in which her officials state that fees should not to be passed onto residents.
In total, officials relayed this message on three separate occasions between August and October, the correspondence shows.
It is unclear who will pay for the €190 charge when the “fair deal” scheme for financing nursing home care comes into operation next week.
Under this scheme, the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) will negotiate the cost of care with nursing homes. Residents will then contribute up to 80 per cent of their disposable income and 5 per cent of the value of any assets each year, while the State will pay the balance.
The NTPF was unable to say yesterday if the €190 fee will form part of the negotiated cost of care, except to say that at present the “fee is a cost of running a nursing home” and that payment of it was between the nursing home and Hiqa.
Nursing Homes Ireland has called for a wider range of services, such as therapies, dental and social care to be included in the new “fair deal” system.