Seniorsnetwork-bc New CCPA study:
Long-term care and home health services in BC on steady decline
F.Y.I
from a regular contributor. Add to your file on health impacts on seniors!!!
Hi:
This is a long introduction and I apologize for that but I think you will wish to read through what I have to say because it does affect your families welfare:
* You are probably tired of my saying it but the key element in the coming BC election should be the failure of the BC Liberals to deliver on the 5000 long term care beds that they declared were needed to meet the needs of seniors and to get them out of acute care beds & into LTC beds:
1) It costs the system 2/3 more to keep seniors in acute care beds than in LTC beds
2) When the beds are being taken up by LTC patients, because there are no available
LTC beds, that plugs up emergency departments because there are no acute care
beds to transfer the patients from emergency and it increases the need for
ambulances to be shuffling patients from hospital to hospital, all at extra cost
3) When the acute care beds are taken up by LTC patients it causes surgeries to be
cancelled - thus increasing wait times ! Pain and inconvenience for the patient and
families is the outcome and even some people are dying before they can get surgery.
4) Shortages of LTC beds means that LTC patients often are being placed in care
facilities outside of the area where they have resided and this is upsetting to them
and makes it difficult, if not impossible for family and friends to visit
* The above are four clear results of the failure of the Campbell admin to deliver on its promise. These are damning enough.
* What is equally damning is the fact that the government really is not monitoring the situation. No - I'm not kidding - part of the government's "deregulation" has led to them not having stats to see how their planning is going ,or as in this case, not going.
* You'll recall that a few months ago the BC government was saying that they had fallen far short of the 5000 beds and had only increased the number by 1400+ and still later this number fell to minus 170. Last Fri the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a study stating that the actual number of LTC beds had decreased between 2001 and Dec 2004 by 1464 beds. Yes - minus 1464 LTC beds !!!
* Is the government lying ? I do not think so - I think that they have deregulated so much that they have no idea what is happening in many sectors - how can they expect to provide good stewardship in the public's interest if they have no idea what is going on.
Sadly, they can't and this is where their philosophy hits the road !
* Even the Vancouver Sun saw fit to publish part of the report, with some graphs, on
page A-3 of Apr 5ths Sun. It only got a 20 second clip on Tony Parsons 6 pm global news on Apr 4 -
BC now ranks far below provincial average in terms of beds per 1000 population over 75 years of age & only New Brunswick is down there with us. This is disgraceful and symbolic & illustrates the lack of care the BC govt has for its citizens because these stats impact a wide spectrum of the population - those waiting for surgery, those needing emergency care, seniors and all of their families.
The availabilty is unevenly distributed in BC:
All of BC ( first figure is % change in beds and the second figure is change in beds per 1000 of pop over 75 ) -6 and -14; the Northern Health Region - +2 and -11; Vancouver /Coastal : -4 and -14; Interior is -16 and -25; Fraser is -4 and -14 and Vancouver Island is -2 and -8.
(Note: these figures represent the changes tween 2001 and Dec 2004 and that is deplorable. )
The stats had to be gathered from Stats Canada; the health regions in BC and BC government - the BC government no longer keeps track of beds so that it and the public can readily see the situation. An abrogation of its responsibility.
* Ah, but the BC government says that it is increasing Home support to make up for this problem ? The study found that this, too, has been cut relative to the pop of those over 75 by 13% since 2001 for hours and a whopping 21% cut in the number of clients and Home care provided by professional nursing has seen both clients and hours decline by 8%. So, there simply has not been additional support given to compensate for trying to keep people in their homes - the opposite is the truth - cuts !
* In the capital Regional District ( Victoria and area ) there are now 162 elderly patients
occupying actue care beds because there is no place to go ! That is costing the health system about $25 to $30 million dollars a year ( or over $100million for the past four years ) and that is the cost for only that small part of BC. In the past four years this has cost BC a lot more than the Fast Ferries cost us ( possibly in excess of ! billion dollars and the cost is continuing.) The BC govt with the assistance of extra funds from the Federal govt has put billions more into Health Care but here is one area where their incompetence is costing in excess of $250 million per year !
( there will probably always be a cost in this overlap but this is so wasteful )
* The BC government is trying to encourage more private developers to put up corporate residential care as the answer to both their philosophy of privitazation and to resolve the issue of beds. This study did a survey of the corporate care facilities and the news is not good for most of us:
1) Residential care fees range from an average of $44,000 to a high of $67,000
2) Assisted Living fees range from an average of $38,000 per year to a high of
$52,000
* The vast majority of continuing care clients are women aged 70 and over and 3/4's of
them have incomes of $25,000 or less in 2000.
* The disconnect between what the designer gang in the Liberals see as the "new era" answer for LTC beds is rather obvious.
* In 2000, my mother and Haldis' mother would have been part of that statistic and most of the clients were women in their homes and most of them were paying in the range of $1100 to $1500 per month and the rest of the cost was subsidized by the government .
Very few of the people we came to know in the homes could have paid even $38,000 per year for assisted living, never mind the over $44,000 for residential care..
* Just think of the average retired couple - our income maybe could pay for one at the lower level but what is the other spouse to do ? One's assets would soon be depleted and given the length of time people are living, well I guess the number living on the street and dumpster diving will only increase under the Liberals !!! This is dreadful to contemplate and as the situation worsens we can expect to see a spike in suicides in the elderly.
* This is the biggest issue of the current election and it is such a huge and profound issue that the government does not deserve to be returned on the basis of allowing such a slide to take place and putting the health and well being of so many people at risk, while not having a clue as to what they were doing or not doing ! Shame !!
Please have a look at some of the report attached below sent along by the Seniors Network or check it out online @ www.policyalternatives.ca/index.cfm?act=news&call=1067&pa=BB736455&do=Article
regards
terry