The Health Service Executive (HSE) said yesterday the reason it halted admissions to a number of private nursing homes recently was because of their staffing levels. It said the homes did not have sufficient staff to take in additional patients.
However, last Friday when the HSE's director of primary community and continuing care, Aidan Browne, revealed that admissions had been halted to a small number of homes, he suggested the reason this step had been taken was because of existing standards in the homes.
"We would have said that we weren't admitting any new clients to those nursing homes until they actually improved their standards," he said.
He made his comments at a press briefing following the publication of the report on deaths at the Leas Cross nursing home or immediately after transfer to hospital from the home between 2002 and 2005.
When asked at the briefing how widespread problems in nursing homes were, he said: "I'm quite satisfied from the reports that we now see that there are a number of nursing homes where there are still a number of problems and we are working very diligently with those nursing homes to improve them.
"We have taken some steps in recent times to actually halt admissions to a number of nursing homes, a very small number of nursing homes, but we are very actively working with nursing homes that have problems."
Asked where these homes were, he said: "I don't have the details of the homes with me but yes, [ in the case of] a number of nursing homes we would have said that we weren't admitting any new clients to those nursing homes until they actually improved their standards."
When asked by The Irish Times yesterday for details of the homes to which admissions had been halted, the HSE insisted the only issue with these homes was that they wouldn't have sufficient staff to look after more patients but it said the homes had sufficient staff to look after the residents already in them.
It did not provide details of the homes.
In a statement it said: "The HSE monitors the level of admissions to nursing homes as part of the inspection process. Occasionally, numbers are capped at a current/specific level to ensure the nursing home is in a position to provide an established level of care to residents.
"The HSE would therefore decide that there are sufficient numbers of staff and level of facilities for the current number of residents but to increase numbers further would be inappropriate.
"On that basis, the HSE can confirm that the level of admissions have been capped at a small number of nursing homes at present because they do not have the current capacity to deliver the services to which they aspire."
Meanwhile, the HSE has taken issue with one of the recommendations in Prof Des O'Neill's report on Leas Cross. He said the families of residents in nursing homes that scored poorly in a tendering process for heavy dependency/intermediate care beds last year should be informed as a matter of urgency.
But the HSE said the tender process was not designed as "an inspection measurement".
It said the tender process looked at a range of issues, and homes could score poorly because they were too costly, for example. It, therefore, has no plans to inform families of how the homes fared in the tendering process.