A battle over the budget could make it hard for seniors to find a good home
Byline: Justine Hunter, Globe & Mail
Does Premier Gordon Campbell really want to kill your grandma, as that campaign ad says? Nah. But his penny-pinching budget has ensured it is about to get much tougher to find her a care home if she needs one.
Starting next week, many seniors care homes in B.C. will be selectively turning away new residents - a strategy intended to press the Campbell government to fund what they calculate is an $80-million shortfall.
It has already started at the Burquitlam Lions Care Centre, located in one of those battleground Burnaby ridings where just a few hundred votes can tip the balance between the Liberals and the New Democratic Party.
"We have to look at each [potential resident] very closely," administrator David Dines said. "We have turned a couple down in the last few weeks."
Outside his facility, a large banner draws attention to the funding issue, but with the election just weeks away, tactics are escalating.
April 1 marks the beginning of the fiscal year, and that's when other members of the BC Care Providers Association will join him in screening seniors more carefully. The care providers say they'll refuse to accept new residents with special needs if they feel they cannot safely do so - given present funding levels.
Mr. Dines said staffing levels at his facility, a 76-bed home for complex-care residents, have been cut to the bone. When the health authority recently tried to place an elderly man in his facility, he said, it didn't mention that he was on immune-suppressing drugs that meant he needed one-on-one attention in a contained environment. The man was turned away.
And, Mr. Dines said, "in general we shy away from people with mental-health issues, who are combative or a security risk."
In the February budget, Mr. Campbell's government reluctantly elected to run a small deficit this year - and health care was one of the few areas that saw a funding increase.
"I think government has been fair and indeed generous," Health Minister George Abbott said in an interview yesterday. In the scale of health-care budgets, $80-million is a pittance but he isn't about to hand it over. If the care home operators don't like their rates, he warned, the government is looking for alternative providers who will.
"We're not going to be held hostage to threats to not admit patients," Mr. Abbott said. "There are numerous facilities in this province that would be very pleased to have government-supported contracts for residential care."
Christine Nidd, president of the BC Care Providers Association, said the new screening process being implemented in April aims to measure the workload associated with each resident. The goal is safety, she said, for both residents and facility workers.
"We are at the point where we cannot reduce staff levels any more," she said. Funding has not kept pace with the growing needs of residents, and the coming election is a chance to bring that issue to the public eye.
"I think you'll see a slowing of the system in terms of accessing residential care beds," Ms. Nidd, "until funding is addressed."
What happens when grandma is turned away? It will take longer to find her a bed, she may be placed in a facility farther from home, or she may spend more time in hospital. If families are unhappy - and they will be - they'll be told to take it up with the province's health authorities that set the budget and determine the levels of care.
It seems a risky strategy, but communities and the families of residents have shown they are backing the demand for more funding.
Ombudsman Kim Carter, who began an investigation into seniors care last summer, said she has been struck by the depth of community involvement she has seen. The response from the public about seniors care has been unparalleled, in her experience. "It's touched a nerve," she said in an interview.
In response to nearly 200 complaints, she and her team of investigators have visited 50 care homes in every region of the province, spending hours in each one talking to staff and residents, poking around the kitchens.
Ms. Carter won't say whether her report will be public before the May 12 election. But it will be revealing, when it comes.
"There appears to have been real changes in population over the past 10 to 15 years. People in those facilities are even more frail and vulnerable today, that's why the focus we're looking at is, are the policies and procedures in place designed to address current needs?"
Today, seniors care is not high in the opinion polls as an election issue. Watch for the New Democrats to push it in select ridings where it can make a difference in the coming campaign - not just in Burnaby but in Kamloops, Surrey and Coquitlam.
