Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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703. To ask the Minister for Health the estimated full-year cost of adding 1,000 acute beds to the hospital network [24761/20]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The average daily running cost of a hospital bed includes clinical staffing, theatres, laboratories, non-clinical staffing and cleaning, maintenance and other running costs. The cost includes critical care and ward beds but they are not separately identifiable. The fully absorbed cost, includes treatment and care costs (such as diagnostics and theatres) as well as the running costs such as heating, lighting and servicing equipment, but excludes capital and depreciation. In addition, this figure does not include other associated hospital costs such as day-case, outpatient and emergency department costs.

In relation to capital expenditure, several factors determine the capital cost of a hospital bed. These include the nature of the bed (day case, in-patient/overnight, intensive/critical care, etc.), and the bed’s location (within an existing hospital, within a new extension to an existing hospital or through the development of a new hospital). As such, there is no one capital cost for providing an additional hospital bed.

In relation to the Deputy's specific question on the estimated full-year cost of adding 1,000 acute beds to the hospital network, as this is a service matter, I have asked the HSE to respond to the Deputy directly.