The Ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, has revealed that the Health Service Executive has illegally taken into account the income of the spouse of a long-stay public nursing home patient when calculating the patient's fee.
Ms O'Reilly said the Department of Health accepted that the national guidelines on the issue must now be changed to bring them in line with regulations introduced last year to legalise charges on nursing home patients.
The Ombudsman's office led the way in establishing that health boards had for years illegally charged public patients in long-stay care. Last year the Government conceded that it owed refunds to thousands of patients.
It then introduced the Health (Charges for In-Patient Services) Regulations which legalised charges after assessing the patient's income.
But launching her annual report for 2005, Ms O'Reilly revealed that a woman has complained to her office that the HSE - in accordance with its national guidelines - is taking into account her income as well as that of her husband - who went into a long-stay nursing-home care a year ago.
The patient - who has a pension of €96 a week - is being charged €120 a week for his care.
The Department of Health has accepted the Ombudsman's view that there is a conflict between the regulations introduced last year and the HSE guidelines for their implementation.
Ms O'Reilly said it seemed that the State was going to refund the family involved and apologise for the trauma caused. The pensioner is owed about €3,000.
She does not know how many others may have been similarly overcharged over the past year.
