Vol. 525 No. 2
125 Mr. Dukes asked the Minister for Health and Children if he has considered the views of the national association of widows in Ireland particularly in relation to the need for health boards to appoint inspectors to visit nursing homes regularly and in relation to mixed wards in general medical and surgical wards of hospitals. [24482/00]
The Health (Nursing Homes) Act, 1990, requires nursing homes to be registered with their local health board. Regulations made under the Act require that there must be proper standards in nursing homes, including adequate and suitable accommodation, staffing, kitchen and sanitary facilities, access to medical care, facilities for recreation and other arrangements to ensure the health and well-being of residents. Nursing homes are required to renew their registration every three years. A health board may impose conditions in relation to registration, including a ceiling on the number of persons who may be accommodated in a home. The regulations provide for periodic inspections by the health boards, which are empowered to prosecute registered proprietors and persons in charge in the event of breaches of the regulations.
Gender mixing occurs in high dependency units such as intensive care, coronary care and accident and emergency departments as well as in small geriatric assessment units. Outside these areas, gender mixing may occur as a result of emergency medical need where no alternative accommodation can be found at the time of admission. Therefore, it may not be possible to reorganise the accommodation arrangements for male and female patients on a day to day basis to correspond with the varied demand for male and female beds as some flexibility is occasionally required in order to ensure patient admission. In such circumstances patients are usually mixed only for short periods until alternative accommodation can be found. On such occasions it would be normal practice that patients would be screened off by the use of curtains, etc. to ensure that a degree of privacy can be maintained.
