Private company set to take over Nenagh's new Community Nursing Home

The new public community nursing home in Nenagh is about to start operations as a privately run step down care facility for patients tranferred there from the over-crowded University Hospital Limerick.

This is despite a last-ditch opposition to the move by people who turned up at a public meeting on the issue in the Scouts Hall in Nenagh last Friday evening.

The determination of senior HSE management to push ahead with the controversial decision was underlined by the fact that no representative from that administration attended the meeting despite invitations to do so.

Independent TD Michael Lowry told those attending that he had been informed by senior management that the brand new €24 million unit at Tyone would start operations as a step down facility for UHL later this month.

The news was greeted with disappointment by all of those who spoke at the meeting. They had looked forward to the unit opening for the purposes for which it was built - as a public nursing home to serve the community.

Most of the disappointment voiced was for the fate of approximate 20 long stay elderly residents at the only other publicly run nursing home in the town - Saint Conlon's in Church Road - who are living the last years of their lives in cramped and obsolete conditions, so poor that the home was condemned by the Health Information Quality Authority [HIQA] a decade ago.

This point was alluded to at Friday's meeting by Cllr Séamie Morris who said the decision by HIQA to now extend permission for the old home to run until 2027 left him to wonder “who HIQA are working for”.

Several hours before the meeting Deputy Lowry issued a statement saying that he had discussions with senior executives in the HSE who confirmed to him that a private company, Bartra Healthcare, had been awarded the contract to run the step down facility for a period of “one year only”.

Deputy Lowry said he had been informed that a consultant-led team of doctors, nurses, and therapists will be on site.

“The facility will be run as a Community Step-Down Rehab and will support the clinical needs of those transferred from UHL.

“North Tipperary patients will benefit from this facility and will be prioritised for admission to the unit.

“The commencement date for the transfer of the first patients is the middle of this month (August),” stated Mr Lowry.

He said the unit will then transfer back to its original purpose as a Community Nursing Home, with the transfer of patients to the new building from the old St Conlon’s Home in September 2025.

Mr Lowry said this decision was taken at the most senior level of management at the HSE, supported by the Minister for Health, Stephen Donnolly.

“It was taken in the context of the appalling overcrowding and unacceptable conditions at University Hospital Limerick.”

Cllr Morris said assurances that the unit would be run as a step down facility for UHL for just a year could not be trusted in the light of previous pledges given. HSE management had said the health service in the Mid West was going to be vastly improved when they closed down the accident and emergency services in Nenagh hospital and Ennis and Saint John's in Limerick in 2009. However, improvements didn't happen and that reconfiguration process had led to massive overcrowding at UHL that persisted to this day.

HEARTBROKEN

Labour councillor Louise Morgan Walsh said she was heartbroken for all the elderly people in the community needing long term residential care who were looking forward to moving into the new unit in Tyone. The current situation was that nursing home beds were now like “gold dust” due to high demand and local elderly people frequently had to move far away from their homes to get nursing home care.

Cllr Morgan Walsh, a senior care nurse by profession, said using the new unit as a step down facility for patients transferred there from UHL was not going to alleviate the crisis that existed in the Limerick hospital.

She Bartra Healtcare were due to hold an open recruitment day in the unit at Tyone on August 12 and had said they would be hiring cleaners, porters and other staff on the day. There was no guarantee that the company would not get an extension to run the facility beyond the time limit stated by HSE management.

Anna Treacy, a SIPTU Shop Steward in St Conlon's Home, accused the HSE of drip feeding the local community about what was happening. She expressed doubts that the town would ever get back the new unit in Tyone to run for the purposes for which it was built.

Fine Gael councillor Phyll Bugler said elderly people in the community needing long term residential care deserved to have the new unit. They had worked hard all their lives and served their country and it was very sad to see the way they were now being treated.

Labour councillor Fiona Bonfield said four of her own family members had received tremendous care in Saint Conlon's Home. However, the building had not met the standards required of modern care homes for several years. The elderly were being deprived of a new home at a time when there was a lack of home-help services to allow them live in their own homes. “I don't know if the Government really understands what is happening on the ground. We fought tooth and nail to get this new community nursing home. What is now happening is so disappointing.”

TALKS VITAL

Deputy Lowry said it was vital that negotiations between unions representing health service staff and HSE, which had broken down, be resumed as quickly as possible to try find a resolution. The minister had the full support of the government for the decision he made and it was important for opponents of the move to lobby members of the government parties in seeking to find a resolution.

Lowry Group councillor Pamela Quirke O' Meara said it was clear from what people were saying that they did not have any trust in what they were being told. Questions had to be asked and it was her job as a public representative to ask those questions and try to get answers.

Pressed to explain his stance on the issue by Cllr Fiona Bonfield, Cllr Michael Lowry said the decision by the HSE to repurpose the new care home was wrong. He said that after initially failing to get the decision reversed, he put forward an alternative proposal to have the new unit shared equally for the care of patients from the old Saint Conlon's Home and as a step down facility for patients from UHL. However, he did not get any support for that proposal and then the HSE and Government pressed ahead and stuck with their own decision.

By way of underlining some of the problems that exist in Saint Conlon's Home, a member of the audience, Brid Slattery, said her elderly father, who was a resident there, was recently hospitalised after contracting Covid for the fifth time. He could not go back to the home because conditions were so cramped that there was a serious threat of infections due to cross-contamination. This was the fate her father faced after working hard and contribution to society all his life.