Athlone woman in hospital over a year unnecessarily

Athlone woman Sammy Brill last week took the opportunity to meet with Health Minister Mary Harney when the minister visited Portiuncula Hospital. Sammy, who has had a neurological condition since birth, has been in Portiuncula Hospital for the past 18 months and according to her doctor John Barton she has been a patient unnecessarily for about a year of that. Sammy had previously written to Minister Harney, but to no avail, and on Friday when the minister was at the hospital to open the new emergency department and special care baby unit, Sammy requested a meeting with her, where she told the minister she wanted to go home. Sammy told the Westmeath Independent this week the minister was very nice to her and she is hoping she will help her. "I'm losing hope," said Sammy. "She is my only hope. She seemed very nice." Sammy said she is looking for 24 hour care at home, which will cost less than it costs for her to be cared for in hospital. Explaining what it would mean to her to be cared for at home, Sammy said: "I'd be over the moon. I'd have my life back, I have no life in here." She said she is now waiting to hear from Minister Harney and is hoping she will approve the funding to allow her to move home. "Otherwise what have I got?" asked Sammy. Sammy's mother Pat said she is hopeful the minister will approve the funding and said being in hospital is really boring for Sammy as she only has a few visitors. She said she will wait a couple of weeks and if she hasn't heard from the minister then she will write to her seeking an update. After the meeting Dr John Barton said Minister Harney had told Sammy that she would look at her case. It will cost €250,000 per year to get Sammy home and to have her looked after properly, Dr Barton said. He said Minister Harney queried how much it was costing to keep her in hospital and while he was unable to tell her exactly how much it costs to keep her in hospital, the staff on the ward where Sammy is said it is costing more than €250,000. "She (Minister Harney) mentioned the possibility to transferring some of the funds from the hospital to the community to look after her," said Dr Barton. "Anyway she said she's going to look into it. I think she's aware of her case from before." Dr Barton said he had held a meeting that morning with local HSE staff and he had informed the meeting that if there was no finality to the case he would go to the media. He said: "I find it very frustrating and I decided today, and I told the meeting today, I'm going to the media. The only way to get her home is to go to the media. That's the way things are in the Irish health system and it's a terrible thing to say, but that's it. The pressure is going to have to come. The HSE locally are saying, yeah we'd like to get her home, but we don't have the budget, they don't have a budget to get her home, this is what she requires." Dr Barton said Sammy was extremely frustrated about the situation, but so was he and the staff on the ward. "The HSE and Prof. Brendan Drumm are all saying keep people out of hospital and I don't disagree with it, but here we have an individual in hospital for a year, who doesn't need to be here," said Dr Barton. "She was living independently up until the time she came into hospital and she had a collapsed lung and she had a lot of serious problems, but she got over them. She's extremely stable, she's rock stable clinically and from a medical point of view she's very stable." He said Sammy was delighted to have met the minister and put her case to her and has some degree of hope that maybe something will happen. Dr Barton said: "Personally I think the only way it will happen is through the media. I held off on the media, Sammy herself had gone to the media about six months ago. The final meeting was today and I had said if we don't get finality on this today I'm going to the media. That's the way it is, that's the nature of our health service, it shouldn't be this way, it's very sad."