By Dan Maclennan, Courier-Islander
Campbell River is suffering a seniors health care crisis, the new North Island Seniors Care Coalition heard at its founding meeting Wednesday evening.
Waiting lists for local extended or 'complex' care beds are growing. Seniors are crowded into inadequate, aging acute care wards at the Campbell River Hospital - at great cost to the taxpayers - while other seniors are draining their savings on private care beds and risking their place on waiting lists.
All this, while a dozen of the most appropriate, modern complex-care beds sit empty for lack of government funding.
"We have to get ourselves organized and see who's out there," meeting chair Anne Beck told the more than 90 people at the Community Centre meeting, "to sound the alarm about the critical shortage of complex-care beds in Campbell River. VIHA has acknowledged the unacceptable delays in getting placements for seniors forced to live on the Campbell River Hospital Acute Care Ward.
"Despite this recognition the problem continues with no end in site."
Comments from the hour-long meeting painted a perplexing picture. Time and time again, participants were left shaking their heads in amazed frustration with a system they see as broken, disrespectful and wasteful.
It's estimated there are 14 seniors in the Campbell River Hospital's 2-North section waiting for placement in complex-care beds in the community. It's known informally as "the Holding Pen" where patients are crowded four to a room, without a bathroom in each room or other basic dignities. There they typically wait six to 10 months for placement in VIHA subsidized complex-care in the community. At least a dozen other seniors are backed up into the hospital's acute care beds, waiting to get to the 2-North Holding Pen. These numbers don't include seniors outside the hospital waiting for long-term care as well.
All this, while at least 12 complex-care beds in the community sit empty.
It's been estimated that Campbell River is short at least 30 complex-care beds. There are roughly 200 VIHA-funded complex-care beds in Campbell River. Those are the beds seniors are waiting to get into because VIHA subsidizes each bed to the tune of roughly $3,000 to $5,000 each per month. Depending on income and other factors, patients pay roughly $1,000 to $3,000 per month for the bed. But the community also has 42 complex-care beds not funded by VIHA where patients pay about $6,000 per month. Twelve of these are currently empty, but VIHA won't subsidize them to provide more service and reduce waiting lists and waiting times. VIHA says it doesn't have the money, yet it's estimated VIHA spends up to $24,000 per month, or four times the private rate, to keep a patient in an acute care bed - also perpetuating the untold overall health care costs of an acute-care bed shortage.
"It's not that we're here to advocate for the facilities in town," Beck said. "We're here to advocate for them to be used better. We want better, faster care for the patients in the hospital, our family members and friends. There are beds available in the community but they're not being used. VIHA is still paying for them to be in an acute bed, and backing up the whole system."
To make matters worse, Wednesday's meeting heard, patients who risk exhausting their savings in a private care bed also run the risk of being passed over by VIHA when funded beds become available. Another major concern voiced Wednesday was the additional costs faced by patients lucky enough to get into subsidized care.
"Even if you have a pension; even if you have medical (coverage); even if you have extended benefits, it's quite expensive to be in care," Beck said she learned with her mother's care. "We need to look at why certain basic services aren't covered for seniors, basic services like physio-(therapy). There's quite a bit of stuff that you end up paying for out of pocket, so no matter how organized you think your finances are, within a couple months your whole life just tailspins out of control."
On Thursday morning, VIHA said "ensuring the most appropriate care environment for our clients and patients is a key priority."
"We recognize that there is a need for additional care capacity, however we have to operate within our available resources. At this time, we do not have available resources to purchase private-pay residential care beds. To provide additional capacity is very expensive. On average, a complex care bed costs $62,000 annually. As an example, $1 million would buy 16 complex care beds for one year."
As for the waiting list concerns of those in private care, VIHA said an individual who is in a private-pay bed can be assessed for placement in a publicly funded bed - before or during their stay in private care - and then be placed on the waiting list "for a publicly funded facility in their preferred geographical area."
The fledgeling North Island Seniors Care Coalition is hoping to reconvene in a couple of weeks to form a working committee and set future directions.
Those looking to be involved can contact Cindy Headrick at 250-203-8621 or Jonathan Brenner at 250-287-7166.
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