Vol. 404 No. 7
169 Mr. Durkan asked the Minister for Health the current daily cost of maintaining a geriatric patient in (a) a public long stay geriatric hospital and (b) in a private nursing home qualifying for health board subvention; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
The current average daily cost of maintaining a patient in a public long stay geriatric hospital is £26.00. The cost in a private nursing home qualifying for health board subvention is £16.00, excluding finance charges as documented in a recent Stokes Kennedy Crowley report commissioned by the Irish Private Nursing Homes Association.
These figures need to be interpreted with caution since they do not take account of factors such as the different degrees of dependency of the patients and the provision of support services. Patients cared for in public long stay geriatric hospitals tend, on average, to be more dependent than those in private nursing homes and the daily cost in the public hospital includes charges for items such as transport, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and occasionally other items such as radiology and pathology, costs which would not be incurred by private nursing homes.
