A HOME for the elderly described as cost-effective, medically efficient and a model of community care, is threatened with closure because of “overkill” by new regulations, it has been claimed by a campaign group in the southeast.
Gahan House in Graiguenamanagh is one of seven voluntary-sector supported care homes in Kilkenny and Carlow, with about 140 residents, which cannot afford to comply with new standards imposed by the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa).
The new rules and an accompanying inspection regime – outlined in a 90-page document published by Hiqa – were introduced to strengthen standards following lapses in care at Dublin’s Leas Cross nursing home and apply to “all residential care services for older people”.
However, campaigners argue the new system was devised to improve standards in nursing homes and should not have been applied to supported care homes, which are run on different lines.
Dr Val Lonergan, a GP and volunteer director of Gahan House, said the residents did not need to be in a nursing home and could live independently with some monitoring. He described the new Hiqa rules, which require the provision of full-time nursing care, as “illogical and inflexible”.
Gahan House, which accommodates 20 people, was developed following a major community fundraising initiative in Graiguenamanagh in 1989 and was designed specifically to “keep older people living in their own area, close to family and friends”.
The home, which is managed by a board of volunteers, receives a subsidy from the HSE but relies heavily on local fundraising and bequests. Pressure on funding has increased since the retirement of nuns from the Sisters of Mercy Order who ran the home for 20 years. Dr Lonergan said the home should be a prototype for other towns and villages around the country. It provided an ideal and safe environment, especially for people who had been living in social isolation but who did not need to go into a nursing home. He “would dread to see it closing”.
A fellow volunteer and board member, Evelyn Murphy, said closure would be devastating. “Where would the old people go? Who would look after them?” she asked. She said the HSE had recently cut the grant it provided to the home and would not provide the extra funds to pay for the nursing cover demanded by Hiqa.
Mary Mulligan, manager of Gahan House since the nuns’ retirement, claimed “the HSE said the facility doesn’t need nursing care and doesn’t have funds for it – but Hiqa says we do. We’re caught between a rock and a hard place.”
She said “being forced to apply nursing-home standards would be a scandalous waste of resources”.
Ms Mulligan added that the weekly cost to the State for a resident at Gahan House was only €158 but that would rise to between €800-€1,200 a week if the residents were forced to find places in public or private nursing homes. “But,” she said, “Gahan House won’t go down without a fight.”
Kilkenny-based Fine Gael Senator John Paul Phelan has written to Minister for Health Mary Harney asking her to exempt the supported care homes from the Hiqa requirements.
He said their closure would be “catastrophic” for the residents and affected communities.