Dedicated nursing home inspection teams are still not in place across the country almost a year after a working group established by the Health Service Executive (HSE) recommended they be put in place as a matter of priority.
The failure to act on the recommendation has angered the incoming president of the Irish Medical Organisation Dr Paula Gilvarry who will raise the issue at the IMO's annual conference later this week.
Dr Gilvarry said yesterday there was only one full-time nursing home inspection team in place. "In all areas there should be full-time teams and it's a year since a working party, set up to look at inspections, recommended that," she said.
"They should be in place. I think it should have happened by now. How long is it since the Leas Cross report came out? The HSE are doing an awful lot of talking but they are not walking the walk at all," she added.
The nursing homes inspections and registration working group, which was set up in July 2005 and reported in May 2006, noted that in most areas the staff required to carry out nursing home inspections have a significant amount of other duties and responsibilities. "Very often the importance of the nursing home inspection and registration aspect of their roles can be superseded by other demands and pressures," it said.
For this reason it strongly recommended priority be given to the appointment of dedicated inspection teams whose remit would solely cover all aspects of nursing home inspections.
Dr Gilvarry, a public health doctor working in the community in the northwest, said that at present half her job involved carrying out nursing home inspections. If she did nursing home inspections full-time who would do all her other work, she wonders.
"The HSE seems to think we can prioritise, but if we give priority to the elderly, children are going suffer," she said.
Furthermore she called on the HSE to ensure the provision of fully resourced community services for older people who want to stay in their own home. She said that under the 'Fair Deal' plan announced by the Minister for Health Mary Harney in December, only the highly dependent would be able to access publicly-funded nursing home care in 2008 but she fears there won't be enough supports for others who have to stay at home.
"I know around the country there is a definite shortage of trained carers and trained home helps and there is no way in 2008, when this 'Fair Deal' is to be implemented, that there will be sufficient carers to provide home care packages for people who need help but are not eligible for long-term nursing home care," Dr Gilvarry said.
A spokeswoman for the HSE said it is still working towards establishing dedicated teams across the country. "But we would stress inspection teams are in place throughout the country and are carrying out full inspections at present," she said.
"In order to establish the dedicated teams there is obviously a process whereby we have to remove people from other tasks in order to allow them concentrate on nursing home inspections alone and obviously that will involve other personnel taking up those duties," she added.
Meanwhile a wide range of other issues ranging from hospital acquired infections to the current consultant contract negotiations, are to be debated at the IMO conference which begins in Killarney on Thursday. Ms Harney is due to address delegates on Friday.