The Galway Hospice Foundation has ordered an "independently-led" expert review of the administration procedures at its hospice in Renmore, Galway city.
All new admissions to the 12-bed unit have been suspended, but day-care and home-care services to 110 patients on the hospice's referral list will continue "as normal", the foundation said yesterday. One patient is currently in residence at the hospice, which remains open.
The 65 nursing and administrative staff have been informed of the development, which is the latest stage in a growing crisis at the institution.
Relations between the medical and nursing staff at the hospice are understood to have been strained for a number of years, but the Galway Hospice Foundation would make no comment on this yesterday. The foundation did confirm that the hospice has been without a chief executive and a manager for some time and said an acting manager had been appointed by the foundation's chairman, Mr Ruan Ó Bric, who is chief executive of Udarás na Gaeltachta.
The lack of a chief executive was "not related" to the current review, a spokesman said. The foundation would appoint the members of the review body, including its independent expert, he added.
The decision to commission the review was taken at a board meeting in Galway on Monday night and it is unclear whether the consultant employed by the Western Health Board and attached to the hospice is aware of its terms of reference.
The consultant is understood to be on annual leave and could not be contacted yesterday. However, the Western Health Board said a locum had been appointed in her absence.
The Galway Hospice dates back more than 10 years, when a campaign began to build a premises in the city for the terminally-ill, spearheaded by Galway general practitioner Dr Padhraic Ó Conghaile. The in-patient unit at Renmore was completed in 1993 after intensive fund-raising and took its first in-patients in 1997, when State support was also secured.
The hospice is a limited company which depends on voluntary contributions, but it also receives an annual grant from the Western Health Board, which amounts to €2.3 million this year. A health board spokesman yesterday welcomed the review but said that any further comment was a matter for the foundation.
The Irish Nurses' Organisation, which represents most of the 17 nursing staff employed to treat in-patients, said it was quite happy with the commissioning of the review. Its members would co-operate, as would the union, and it would like to see the findings published.
Some 80 per cent of the hospice's patients are cared for at home, in line with the philosophy of allowing people to spend their last days in their own environment, where possible.
About 1,800 people have been treated by the hospice since it opened.