Quebec funds more baths for nursing home seniors
How many times a week should a nursing home resident get a bath?
On Wednesday, Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette and Francine Charbonneau, the minister responsible for seniors, announced an investment of $36 million to pay for two baths per resident every week.
The goal is to improve hygiene services in the province’s longterm care facilities, the Centres d’hébergement et de soins de longue durée (CHSLD), Barrette explained at a news conference in Quebec City.
“We are talking about giving the possibility, to those who want it, to receive a second bath,” he said. However, “not everyone is capable of having a second bath” because of their mental or physical conditions.
The announcement involves the hiring of 600 full-time orderlies for this enhanced service. However, they won’t all be hired next week, Barrette warned, adding the province will be recruiting to fill the positions.
Finally, confirmation that bathing is a necessity, said Pierre Blain, the executive director of the Regroupement provincial des comités des usagers (RPCU), which defends patients rights across the province. An estimated 40,000 seniors live in Quebec’s public nursing homes.
“It’s deplorable they didn’t do it earlier. We’ve been asking for this for years,” Blain said. “This is good news for people in long-term care. Now we’re facing a problem of hiring and a shortage of orderlies.”
As of 2011, some health facilities have been turning a blind-eye to under-the-table payments from patients who wanted a second bath.
Barrette had said two years ago that he would not tolerate “black market” baths, and ordered orderlies to stop accepting cash from residents who wanted more than one bath a week. In another case, a CHSLD resident with multiple sclerosis started a GoFundMe campaign in May 2016 to raise money so he could pay to have two extra showers per week.
However, Barrette also defended sponge-bathing as adequate: “A bath is not a panacea,” he said last year. “You can have (good) hygiene without a bath.”
On Wednesday, Barrette reiterated that the province’s hygiene standards in nursing homes are adequate, “but we’re here to improve services.”
Funding for more bathing came after Barrette and Charbonneau held a fact-finding mission to Quebec’s public nursing homes last year.
The $36 million is the first step, Barrette said, and there will be others. The money came from negotiating a better price for generic drugs with Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association. In July he announced a saving in excess of $1.5 billion over five years or $300 million annually.
Parti Québécois health critic Diane Lamarre said $36 million is “peanuts” in the overall health budget and the government should be spending more money on patients and less on doctors.
“This looks like electoral candy,” she said. “He’s trying to give gifts one year before the election.”
A provincial election will be held in 2018.
Amir Khadir, an MNA for Québec solidaire said the announcement of 600 attendants to give a second bath is good. “But it’s also necessary to be able to fill these positions when the working climate discourage and demoralize the health workforce,” he said. “What Mr. Barrette does not say is that he is having difficulty filling the positions of staff he announced last year. For this to work, the minister must offer better salaries to attendants, rather than doctors, as we learned today.”
Khadir is referring to an agreement-in-principle reached last August between Quebec and its family doctors that has yet to be ratified by the members of the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens (FMOQ). Under the agreement, which has not been made public, family physicians will get an increase of 10 per cent over three years.