The percentage of elderly people in nursing home care is the same now as it was in the late 1960s, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) claimed yesterday.
Dr Christine O'Malley, a consultant geriatrician and an active member of the IMO, said there was a popular perception that there were more older people in nursing home care now because families are going out to work, but statistics did not bear this out.
She said an IMO analysis found 5.2 per cent of the population over 65 years were in nursing home care in 1968 and 5.1 per cent of the population over 65 years were in nursing home care in 2001.
However she said there was a major difference in who provided nursing home care then and now. In 1968 some 80 per cent of nursing home beds were provided by the State but in 2001 more than half of nursing home beds were provided in the private sector, she said.
Speaking at the publication of the IMO's pre-budget submission which called on the Government to increase the cost of cigarettes by €2 a packet, Dr O'Malley said many elderly people had been looked after in the past in long-term-care beds in psychiatric hospitals but these were "slashed" from 4,577 in 1968 to 1,396 in 2001.
In its pre-budget submission the IMO called for the provision of more public nursing home beds and an immediate increase in nursing home subvention.
"Although private nursing homes can manage care for some elderly people, there is a clear need to provide a significant proportion of care in public nursing homes. Private nursing homes have no obligation to take all who present to them," the submission said.
"The failure to develop public nursing home services causes, to a significant extent, the current A&E crisis," it added.
The IMO has also called for the provision of an extra 3,000 hospital beds and said private hospitals should not be given "undue favour with tax breaks" as this was funding which could go into the public hospital system.
IMO president Dr Asam Ishtiaq said the shortage of beds meant the system could not cope. He said operations were again being cancelled for the winter period.
He also said there were "thousands" of patients waiting years to see hospital consultants in outpatients after being referred by their GP.
Dr Ronan Boland, a GP in Cork, said he had two patients over 80 years who would be waiting three years to be assessed in outpatients before they could be put on a waiting list for hip operations. They were in severe pain and would probably die from the treatment they were being on for long periods while they waited for surgery, he said.