The National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin, is unable to admit any new patients due to funding cutbacks, its medical director said yesterday.
Dr Nicola Ryall, consultant in rehabilitation medicine at the hospital and chair of its medical board, said the hospital had a number of patients ready for discharge but they could not be released because funding for their community care packages had been frozen. As a result, new patients could not be admitted.
"Currently, we have been told we have to come in under budget and we are not able to admit people . . . One of the main reasons is because we have a significant number of patients waiting to be discharged and the funding for their community care packages, whether carers coming into the home or places for nursing homes, has been frozen so we can't discharge patients," she told RTÉ's Liveline programme.
She added that staff were frustrated and upset by this.
The son of a man due to be discharged to a new north Dublin nursing home told The Irish Times the plan to discharge him changed at the last minute. "At the 11th hour, the Health Service Executive pulled funding for all bar one person," he said.
The wife of a Dublin man who recently suffered a stroke and requires intensive rehabilitation said he was due to be admitted on October 20th but was told this week the admission had been cancelled. "We were told due to cutbacks he's not going . . . and we have no date now for his transfer," she said.
She claimed whoever cut the funding for care packages and nursing homecare for those due to be discharged may have signed her husband's death certificate.
The Irish Private Home Care Association called for an end to the withdrawal of homecare packages to older persons.
Minister for Health Mary Harney and chief executive of the HSE Prof Brendan Drumm have been claiming patients are not suffering as a result of HSE cutbacks and its recruitment ban.
Yesterday evening, the HSE said the target for 2007 was to provide homecare packages for 4,000 extra clients and, by the end of June, 3,900 additional people had benefited from them. This suggests money for the homecare packages ran out months ago but the HSE would not confirm this.
The HSE's imposition of a recruitment embargo and other cutbacks was the subject of a Labour Relations Commission hearing yesterday.
Health service unions claimed the HSE breached the terms of the national agreement, Towards 2016, by the manner in which it announced the cost-cutting. They sought the withdrawal of the HSE circular implementing the cuts.
There was no agreement between the parties and the matter has now been referred for a binding ruling by the Labour Court.
Brendan Mulligan of the HSE Employers Agency, rejected the suggestion it had breached Towards 2016.