Are the nursing home closures due to other revenue streams emerging for the properties

veryangryman

3 that i know of recently closing in separate areas of the country. You do have to question the loyalties the owners have to the residents

Not trying to stir up shiite here but it seems a reasonable reach to assume that they know the state will pay better rates for use of the facilities?

kirk.

There's staff shortages I know that

veryangryman

In some cases, more than 1 close in the same area. Logically one would subsume some of the other's staff

Jim_Hodge

The ones I know that closed are sitting idle and the owners upset that they couldn't staff them, so I think you're projecting a bit far OP.

Supercell

Staff shortages I'd imagine. Childcare workers are getting a rise to €13 per hour minimum but healthcare workers can be paid minimum wages, is the work they do more valuable than healthcare workers?, the government clearly thinks so.

Sardonicat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733515#Comment_119733515

If only the going rate for a Health Care Assistant was more than peanuts. It might be easier to staff them, them.

mohawk

I know of one that closed recently. Decision was made because there was a lot of maintenance and renovation work to be done to keep it inline with current regulations/standards. (Or at least that is what they told the staff). Some places are also finding it difficult to recruit staff too. It’s very difficult for the residents especially if it was their local nursing home.

When a relative was in one for a few years he was close enough for people to pop in regularly and also when other locals visited their relatives they would often drop by for a chat. The further away they are from where they are from I think the lonelier it is to live in a nursing home.

kirk.

Regulations and bureaucracy would be an issue too

Money would surely be the bottom line but they must be a nightmare to operate

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733529#Comment_119733529

I agree but they then couldn't afford to keep the business going. It's a catch22.

Sardonicat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733630#Comment_119733630

The problem is that care of our most vulnerable is being left to vagaries of market forces. They certainly charge enough , don't they?

Jequ0n

“loyalties the owners have to the residents”

These are businesses like anything else. Loyalty to residents/ customers will always be secondary

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058267108/are-the-nursing-home-closures-due-to-other-revenue-streams-emerging-for-the-properties

energy costs must be killing them now, and the overall model of squeezing labor in order to help maximize profits, creates a very short term game....

timmyntc

Much cheaper to run accommodation for refugees than a nursing home - less staff needed, and the payouts are straight from the state.

The better business opportunity will sway owners

Confused11811

Homeless Hubs is another cash cow too.

Strumms

Change of purpose is to maximise their bed space / revenue stream. As long as Putin is being aggressive people will continue to flee the Ukraine. As long as Ireland are EU members we shall enjoy zero say over our borders and have zero say as regards what happens on our island.

the nursing home can dispense with all expensive medical equipment, it’s doctors, it’s nurses, carers, physiotherapist.… talking at a guesstimate, close to 500,000 euro saving per annum for an average sized facility. Because it’s not healthcare they can squeeze more people in…so a big saving, plus maybe 20%+ more revenue…. They’ll slash their insurance bill as practically nobody on site will have serious health or mobility issues.

see a facility for refugees is far cheaper to run…no surprise when hotels gave the tourism industry and Irish citizens the middle finger that other industry would follow suit…

Muahahaha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733659#Comment_119733659

They certainly do and half the problem is these leeches of agencies that the HSE are facilitating. The agencies pay care assistants 50 cents above minimum wage and give them no milage allowance between jobs driving from house to house to look after elderly people in their homes, cooking for them, cleaning for them, bathing and showering them. And for that the HSE pays these agencies 30 euros an hour to sit in an office and get fat off the profits. While the people actually doing all the hard work are on poverty wages and cant make ends meet.

kirk.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119735558#Comment_119735558

The charities that do home care do much the same Alzheimer's etc.

They're hiring long term unemployed putting them on CE schemes with no mileage allowance, zero staff cost to them afaik

Muahahaha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119735629#Comment_119735629

I read a figure recently of 1,400 per week or 72,000 per year for a patient with an illness like Alzheimers. I know from an ex that the Sisters of Charity have private houses dotted all around Dublin and there will be 3-4 patients in each house. The HSE are paying the nuns these fees and then they hire in minimum wage work and as you say CE schemes which is paying them no wages at all. When you do the maths on a single house it is a pretty lucrative business, almost 300,000 a year if there are 4 people staying there and they have multiple houses.

These agencies, charities, etc in the care sector are the very reason why care is so expensive in Ireland becasue the actual staff doing the hard work are certainty not making much out of it, if they get a wage at all. They are lucrative businesses who are creaming it off taxpayers money and then paying poverty wages and then having the gall to say that they cant get staff.

kirk.

No travel allowance for the staff on a CE scheme

Presume the head honchos in these charities are hoovering up all the funds for themselves

salonfire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119734051#Comment_119734051

Wait. Are you in a thread about nursing homes closing complaining about them making too much profit?

If they are maximizing profits, why are they closing?

Lets see you explain your way out of this one with your crap.

Ubbquittious

I would have thunk nursing homes were a great business to be in. Take on a load of chungwans eager to gain experience and further their nursing career, pay them a pittance.

Keep patients barely alive through careful use of crushed sleeping tablets in food, milk their pensions, fob the more troublesome ones off to hospitals or mental institutions. The only downside I can think of is they must spend an absolute fortune on heating oil / gas. I don't know what the minimum temperature of those places is but it must be close to 30 degrees

maninasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119733515#Comment_119733515

Will be full of refugees soon enough, barely any planning oversight and low expectations.

kirk.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119737084#Comment_119737084

Well i knew a fair bit from being around that environment

AFAIK they used to be very profitable but profitability went down a lot

I can see how refugees would pay more sure it would be a quick cash cow too before the creeping regulation starts

Ray Palmer

I know of 2 nursing homes that really should move and be used for residential housing due to their locations. The reality is these people do not need to commute and be close to services like schools and shops. Huge one in Clontarf and across the road people are objecting to the school sold lands having housing being built.

The other is on the Malahide Road.

I get the families need to visit their relatives but it is madness to have people commuting daily and also to visit their family because they have to live so far away. Clontarf has a few old houses that are used for nursing homes which will all sell up within the next 20 years.

I have had relatives in nursing homes and it really doesn't matter where it is to the residents. A lot of the older places really are no longer suitable for modern care.

Regulation is needed because if it’s not there you get abuse. True in the crash. True in HSE nursing homes. True in other nursing homes. True in most areas of human life.

There are obviously better opportunities for businesses out there. The thing about the market is it has only one goal. It improves efficiency if that improves profit. It disimproves efficiency if that improves profit.

It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion at the moment as the realization dawns that the market simply follows the money. And the unforeseen consequences of refugees from Ukraine, the surge in asylum claims after UK/Rwanda feed into this problem. Slowly the questions will be asked as to the root of that limitless generosity to Ukraine. And even more slowly the answer will be faced.

Muahahaha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119738347#Comment_119738347

Just on that there is one in Finglas next to Tesco Clearwater and it was a hotel until the recession hit and they converted it to a nursing home, circa 2011 it was converted iirc. The irony now is with the way energy and insurance costs have gone they would probably be a lot more profitable to convert it back to a hotel or short term lets given the housing crises.

Or else refugee accomodation which seems to be a very lucrative business to be in- back in the summer the IT reported that the Dept of Housing were paying hotels 100 euro per refugee per day in the contracts they are handing out and its very much up to the hotel how they house them, ie 3 to 4 per room, sweat the sh1t out of the asset and maximise profits. The Red Cow Hotel got caught putting them sleeping on the floor in a conference room a few months ago. At the time they were housing 800 refugees according to RTE. At a 100 quid a night per refugee that works out at 80,000 euro per night which is an astonishing amount. Do that for a year and they are generating just shy of 29 million for packing the place to the rafters full of refugees. Nursing home owners must be looking on at this with severe jealousy.

BrianD3

For profit nursing homes, naturally enough, employ the minimum number of staff and pay them peanuts. There are no regulations on staff to resident ratios. They do the minimum to keep HIQA off their backs. Only 23% of NHs were deemed fully compliant by HIQA in 2019.

I have experience of several of these places and they are not places that anyone would choose to live in, if a person is able to do a particular task with assistance (e.g. eating, toileting) going in to a NH, they won't be doing so for long after they go in as it is easier/quicker to just spoon-feed them or change their incontinence pad rather than helping them to the toilet. HIQA inspections do not pick up on this, Also I know people who went into NHs for respite care and came out having lost a considerable amount of weight after only a week due to the way these places operate.

One of the nursing homes that closed recently has 30 residents and is paid about 1000 per week per resident under the Fair Deal. So 30 grand a week. given the wages paid to care assistants, I find it hard to believe that these places aren't profitable, even with insurance, increased energy etc. costs.

If they see any opportunity i.e. asylum seekers to make more profit for less work, of course they will take it.

Typical of this half arsed cute hoor country to outsource important public, health and social services to private businesses then wonder why public services are in chaos. Whose idea was all of this? "Funny" how Celtic tiger property developer were also involved in nursing homes, A Galway Tent job?

Danzy

No wonder the refugee industry is packed with the rich progressive kids of South Dublin.

It's a wheeze the tax payer that even Haughey couldn't of dreamt up and it's always a problem foisted on working class Dublin or "down the country", never where the activists live.

Muahahaha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119738689#Comment_119738689

Wait until you see what is coming next, the IT reported last week that now refugees are coming here in their thousands from Georgia and Albania and when they get on the plane they 'lose' their passport. This is becasue both countries are deemed safe countries and if they have a passport they will be sent right back at the port of entry. However without a passport Immigration cannot do anything legally and they have to be allowed to stay from where they quickly put in an aslyum application which as we know will allow them to stay at least a couple of years. At 100 quid a night each one of these refugees is worth 36,500 euro a year to a hotelier and government departments are literally throwing millions at this.

The numbers arriving at the airport with no travel documents are at their highest in years. The figures for the first seven months of 2022 are already 40 per cent higher than all of last year. They are also 225 per cent higher than figures for 2018 and almost double the figures for 2019. The figures do not include people who were under-16.

The number of people claiming asylum after flying to Dublin without a passport represents 40 per cent of the 7,760 who claimed asylum in Ireland between January and July this year.

The total number claiming asylum during that period was up 778 per cent on the figures for the same period last year (claims last year and for 2020 were particularly low due to Covid-19 travel restrictions).

And the Minister of Justices response to this?

“In terms of the international protection numbers, I do believe that this is probably a more permanent change,” Minister for Justice Helen McEntee said when asked about the increase. She noted that countries across Europe were seeing similar increases. “I think it’s just a representation of the changing environment, a changing world and many global challenges that people are facing, including climate and war. So we need to be able to respond.”

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2022/10/06/thousands-of-passengers-destroy-or-lose-passports-before-arrival-at-dublin-airport/

Thats basically a green light for us now to take in tens of thousands of Albanians and Georgians because its an open secret among those groups that if they want to come to Ireland all they have to do is just rip up your passport on the plane and bin it. Many of them will also know that it is also government policy to end direct provision and to give refugees their own door accommodation, i.e government policy is to use taxpayers money to give refugees houses and apartments. So they can do a couple of years in a hotel and then get a free house all while there is a housing crises on and you have students living in cars and almost 11,000 homeless and a few hundred thousand on housing waiting lists, many for over a decade now. It is a clusterfcuk of epic proportions.

corner of hells

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119737084#Comment_119737084

Do nursing homes not employ nurses to administer medication? For the life of me I could not imagine a nurse crushing up sleeping tablets and putting it in a residents food that's assuming they've been prescribed sleeping tablets at all.

As for getting a resident admitted to a mental institution, what type of institution would you thinking off , a psyche ward , a Portrane type of hospital?

kirk.

Helpers have qualifications to administer medication

You don't have to be a nurse