Sir, – Simon Carswell’s article on the closure of rural nursing homes is indeed a wake-up call (“Two more private nursing homes close their doors”, News, October 4th).
The common theme is that the nursing homes now closing are all outside Dublin. There is a 32 per cent nursing home Fair Deal fee per week differential between the west of Ireland and Dublin, per the recent survey. In addition, public nursing homes get, on average, a fee 62 per cent greater than private nursing homes.
I have often wondered why this is. Electricity, insurance, gas and food should be the same price levels nationwide and, with legalisation on minimum wages, the staff cost, the biggest cost in a nursing home, should be equivalent. So why does the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), which sets nursing home Fair Deal fees, discriminate against rural and particularly western and northwestern private homes in respect of fee levels? It must now accept that the pending shortage of nursing home beds in these areas and the increasing closures are as a result of its fee pricing policy.
As a State body, I believe it is duty bound to explain the rationale for this discriminatory approach to those service users who are going to be adversely affected by the lack of future bed supply in these areas. – Yours, etc,
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Dr JONATHAN ROTH,
Clancy’s Strand,
Limerick.