A NUMBER of private nursing homes have still not reached agreement with the national treatment purchase fund (NTPF) on the prices they will be paid by the State for caring for older people under the new Fair Deal nursing homes support scheme.
However, the Department of Health has insisted the new way of funding long-term care will still come into effect before the end of this year.
Under the scheme, which was announced by Minister for Health Mary Harney in December 2006 and which was due to begin in January 2008 but had to be delayed, people going into nursing homes will be able to defer payment for their care until after their death, when the State will be able to recoup up to 15 per cent of the value of their home to cover the cost of their care.
The Nursing Homes Support Scheme Act 2009 was signed into law on July 1st and sections of it were started on July 3rd to enable the purchase fund to begin price negotiations with private nursing homes on behalf of the State. Ms Harney has indicated the scheme will be implemented once these negotiations are concluded.
The 450 or so private and voluntary nursing homes in the State were given two options on pricing by the fund. They could accept what homes describe as a “random” figure offered for the cost of care by the fund (Option A) or put forward another figure and begin negotiations (Option B). More than 100 homes accepted Option A, with one owner saying it was more than he would ever have charged residents.
Several other homes which went the Option B route were told they would have to reach agreement with the fund on pricing by Friday last. But it is clear this did not happen in all cases.
The homes, under documentation circulated to them by the NTPF, were warned not to discuss the prices they were offered or their price negotiations with any other home owner. However, The Irish Times understands a significant amount of negotiations with homes still has to take place before the fund’s work under the scheme is finished.
The fund said it was drawing up a list of homes that had agreed prices with it at close of business on Friday last but it would not say how many homes were on this list. “As commercially confidential discussions between the fund and a number of nursing homes are still in progress the NTPF is not able to comment any further,” it said.
A spokeswoman for the department said that even though the fund’s work was ongoing the scheme will commence “no later than the final quarter of this year”.
Tadhg Daly, chief executive of Nursing Homes Ireland, said he was concerned at all the secrecy and believed the fund had a duty to run the scheme in an open and transparent manner. But the big issue was what Fair Deal would and wouldn’t cover, he said. While old people were being told they would pay a maximum of 80 per cent of a State pension towards their care under the scheme, the fund was not factoring in the cost of things such as therapies and incontinence wear into its pricing.
The department said the issue of therapies is being examined across all care settings in the context of forthcoming eligibility legislation. Local arrangements between homes and HSE offices on incontinence wear would continue “for the time being”.
The delay in introducing the Fair Deal scheme is being blamed for the increased number of delayed discharge patients in acute hospitals. Last week the number of beds blocked by patients who should have been discharged stood at 743.