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There should be a public consultation process put in train to give the wider population an opportunity to contribute their views on the entire nursing home regulatory system. We want to see far greater transparency in HIQA’s quality management system, key performance indicators and reporting metrics. In particular, HIQA’s recent claims to the Oireachtas Committee that it needed further powers to enhance nursing home regulations need to be urgently clarified. This and HIQA’s apparent prior Read more…

The nursing home sector requires a champion to lead a culture change in hygiene and infection control, for instance, the laxity around the wearing of duty uniforms outside of the nursing home setting (coming on duty and going off duty) needs to be addressed. We want to see better staff patient ratios, particularly at night as well as improvements in general standards of hygiene and infection control. We are anxious for a review of the Read more…

Regrettably, the national standards and regulatory process are not robustly enforced. There is no apparent evidence that they assist service providers to develop a real culture of quality care and continuous improvement. We are not aware of any efforts made by HIQA to have the quality standards improved or updated. We believe that the existing regulation governing care plans need to be strengthened while the terms of nursing home contracts of registration could be made Read more…

For years, nursing homes have operated in isolation with private nursing home residents denied access to routine health services open to others in the community, such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy. In our view, this idea of ‘other’ contributed in no small part to the COVID-19 debacle, where the HSE did not view nursing homes as being part of the healthcare system. This was further exacerbated by the general lack of medical equipment in nursing Read more…

The establishment of the Nursing Home Expert Panel in response to COVID-19 was a necessary and commendable step on the part of Government. While the group was given a short-term focus and an extremely narrow timeline in which to complete its work, and while it did receive numerous submissions from stakeholders, we were disappointed with the Group’s overall lack of engagement with service users. There has been huge variation reported by relatives around the country, Read more…

The absence of an independent and timely procedure for handling complaints is one of the more glaring omissions from HIQA’s current model of regulation. This state of affairs has been a cause of much distress and frustration for countless nursing home residents and their families over these past eleven years. Currently, if you raise a complaint with HIQA, it is not followed up or investigated but is noted and reclassified as a “concern” for inclusion Read more…