Byline: Amy O'Brian, Vancouver Sun
A few weeks ago, the Burquitlam Lions Care Centre was asked to admit an elderly man with a compromised immune system. The man's fragile health meant he would need to be isolated from the other residents, the staff would have to wear masks and gowns, and he would need significantly more attention than other residents.
After reviewing his file, the Burquitlam Lions Care Centre refused him entry. Without extra funding to cover the extra costs, the care home decided it would not be able to adequately care for the man and returned his file to the Fraser Health Authority.
"We couldn't accept him for his own health and safety," David Dines, administrator of the care home, said Monday.
Dines and his colleagues with the BC Care Providers Association say an increasing number of seniors will be turned away if the province doesn't provide more funding to privately operated care homes.
"We're at the breaking point," said Christine Nidd, president of the BCCPA.
The association, which represents about 30 per cent of the care home beds in B.C., says its members' homes get significantly less funding than homes that are operated and managed by the health authorities.
Nidd said the funding gap is creating a multi-tiered system. She said some of the government-run care homes get twice as much funding per patient as the private homes.
The battle between the Care Providers Association and the province has been a long and heated one.
The threat to freeze under-funded resident admissions has been deliberately timed to coincide with lead-up to the provincial election. Dines conceded the timing of the public debate was "not accidental."
NDP health critic Adrian Dix weighed in Monday, agreeing that the provincial funding model for care homes is "incoherent." He said the not-for-profit homes are expected to find more money from donors and clients, while receiving less from the government.
But George Abbott, minister of health services, said funding is not determined by who operates the care home.
"The suggestion that the private care providers are being discriminated against in relation to the public care providers, I have not seen the basis for that," Abbott said Monday in a telephone interview.
Abbott said funding levels are determined by the level of complexity of the cases being admitted, the date at which the contracts were negotiated and concluded, and the special facilities or amenities involved in caring for residents with more complex needs.
The Care Providers Association would like the province to make public a list of all the care homes and their individual funding rates.
And until they see what they say is a fairer funding model, based on the needs of their residents and the required staffing levels, they will continue to turn away seniors for whom they cannot safely provide care.
But Abbott is refusing to back down.
"We're not going to be held hostage to a pre-election pressure tactic to provide extra dollars," he said.
