Hospitals and psychiatric institutions usually do their rounds in shared rooms and that a meeting room is only available for palliative patients. The Lower Austrian regional clinics holding company (NÖ Landeskliniken-Holding) seized the criticism as an opportunity to initiate a discussion process and develop solutions in the relevant advisory boards and committees in order to better guarantee the right to privacy and data protection in the future despite structural restrictions. XX  In the field of psychiatry, refurbishment measures and new construction are urgently required and must be initiated as soon as possible in order to guarantee contemporary care. XX  Therapeutic meetings should take place in designated rooms in the interest of protecting the personal space of the patients. 2.2.9 Long-term stays of psychiatric patients The commissions observed repeatedly on their monitoring and control visits that patients are cared for in psychiatric hospitals for long periods of time although this is not necessary from a medical point of view. Such long-term stays in psychiatric hospitals do not comply with current standards of medical science and are mainly attributable to the insufficiency of non-residential places for specific groups of persons. Long-term stays in conflict with UN CRPD The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) requires that persons with disabilities including psychiatric long-term patients are able to choose where they stay based on their needs and can decide themselves where and with whom they live. In this way, local care should be guaranteed that enables those affected to lead a self-determined life in the community and avoids isolation and segregation. Under this aspect too, a long-term stay in a psychiatric hospital is problematic, particularly in acute psychiatric wards. The NPM thus considers it urgently necessary that suitable care places are created for seriously ill persons, in particular for persons with multiple diagnoses and behavioural disorders. These care places must have a sufficiently high staff ratio and nursing qualifications in order to be able to adequately care for seriously ill patients. Furthermore, there is a need for transitional treatment places for patients who are being discharged from an acute psychiatric ward. Expansion of specialised facilities necessary Placing psychiatric patients in “normal” retirement and nursing homes is, however, not suitable as adequate care cannot be guaranteed in these facilities. The NPM thus argues emphatically in favour of expanding non-residential areas and creating adequate care places for psychiatric patients. 59

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