HSE set to press ahead with plan for St Conlon’s in Nenagh
The HSE is pressing ahead with plans to repurpose the multi-million euro new Saint Conlon's community nursing home unit at Tyone, Nenagh, as a privately run stepdown facility to ease overcrowding in the University Hospital Limerick.
Details of the requirements for private tenders seeking to run the repurposed facility are published on the website of the Office of Public Procurement website, local Labour Party TD Alan Kelly, who is furious over the move, disclosed to this newspaper on Tuesday.
Under the procurement process, the HSE on behalf of the Regional Executive Office, Mid West, is seeking a “managed service arrangement” for up to 50 community rehabilitation beds at what it calls the “Community Rehabilitation Unit” in Nenagh.
Under the process, the HSE said it is seeking “to deliver a model of care that allows for adults with a rehabilitation need to access community rehabilitation beds locally, whether they are in an acute hospital or residing in the community.”
It adds: “The model of care for Level 2 rehabilitation beds delivered as part of this plan is specialist consultant-led supported by a skilled interdisciplinary team, with clinical governance from a rehabilitation medicine or a geriatric medicine consultant.”
Patients with moderate complexity, moderate intensity rehabilitation needs, who may also have ongoing medical needs such as IV antibiotics, wound care, catheter care, etc, can be cared for within this model, the HSE informs potential tenders.
It says it anticipated the service will be predominantly, but not exclusively, focused on older adult requirements.
UNIONS OPPOSITION
Meanwhile, Deputy Kelly revealed that trade unions last week met with the HSE on the issue of repurposing the new home, which was originally meant to cater for older people needing community nursing care, including residents of the decades-old Saint Conlon's Home at Church Road, Nenagh, which has been deemed by HIQA as not fit for providing modern levels of nursing home care requirements into the future.
Deputy Kelly, in refernece to concerns by public sector unions over the planned repurposing of the new Saint Conlon's said: “The HSE had broken public service pay agreements by not negotiating with them in the first place. I was informed that at the meeting the trade unions of SIPTU, INMO and FORSA made it clear that that they were totally opposed to the privatisation of the CNU into a ‘sub-acute’ step-down facility and would oppose it wholeheartedly. The HSE were to look at their options and revert.
“Following on from my questioning of the Government on this on February 28, I received an updated status reply from Minister Donnelly.
“In this reply the minister makes a mockery of those discussions between the trade unions and HSE last week by confirming his intention to proceed with the privatisation of the CNU, thereby ensuring the elderly in Nenagh and surrounds and the residents and staff in St Conlon’s are disgracefully let down by this Government.
“He also confirms a tender has gone out behind the trade unions’ backs for this privatisation and that the length of time has also been pushed back to 18 months from when the company is in place. This is contrary to all previous promises from the HSE that the CNU would be in place in 2025.
“The minister says this new sub-acute, step-down facility ‘will be a collaborative partnership between the HSE and the successful provider’. That’s impossible because this letter demonstrates the lack of sincerity with which the HSE are engaging on this. They have made their minds up and already have gone behind the backs of the trade unions.
“The workers, the residents, their families and the elderly around Nenagh deserve better than this and we as a community need to fight this tooth and nail with the trade unions over the coming weeks and months,” Deputy Kelly concluded.