Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 17:

In page 14, between lines 25 and 26, to insert the following subsection:

"(13) The content of a care needs assessment report shall be provided to a nursing home in advance of the subject residing in and receiving care from said nursing home.".

This is a straightforward amendment. This is good practice and is already incorporated into the code of practice for integrated discharge planning published by the HSE this year. That document states that patients being discharged should receive a seamless transition from one stage of care to the next. It makes the point that one service cannot work in isolation from another and that all stakeholders must accept their interdependency and must work together to ensure there are no gaps in services or duplication of effort.

It refers also to integrated discharge planning relying on knowledge being passed between the different service providers and states that family carers, general practitioners and other service providers should be contacted at least the day before discharge to confirm the patient is being discharged and to ensure that services are activated or reactivated as appropriate. It further states that upon discharge the patient should receive an information pack, a carer's plan, medication record and so on and suggests that receipt of a referral must be tracked into a patients record within 24 hours of that referral.

All of this is extremely practical. It puts in place in the code of practice a system that will ensure that patients' care needs are passed on efficiently between the different services used by the patient. For example, the details of an elderly person leaving hospital to go to a nursing home should be passed on. The amendment seeks to put into statutory form that the contents of a care needs assessment report shall be provided to a nursing home in advance of the subject residing in and receiving care from the said nursing home. As I stated, this is good practice. It is a good idea to include this in the legislation. It will ensure this happens automatically and that such matters are not left to the code of practice but are a requirement.