Class action suit targets ‘shameful’ long-term care ‘It’s about dignity, how we treat our elderly people in the system’
Daniel Pilote, 56, who has lived in a St-Jean-sur-Richelieu longterm care nursing facility for the past four years, says medical staff there are so overworked that he’s afraid no one will get to him in time should his breathing machine fail.
Paralyzed from the neck down with muscular dystrophy, Pilote says he’s being rough-handled by staff that has about 10 minutes to wash and dress him each day.
Pilote has become the plaintiff in a class-action suit that a patients’ rights group is seeking to launch against Quebec’s network of longterm care centres for providing its residents with “bad service” the lawsuit describes as abusive.
The Conseil pour la protection des malades (CPM) has spent months preparing the suit, which cites “deplorable and shameful” conditions inflicted on patients “too vulnerable to complain.”
“Fundamentally, it’s about dignity, how we treat our elderly people in the system,” said lawyer Philippe Larochelle, an expert in class-action procedures who filed the suit. “It boils down to a question of dignity as protected by the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.”
The class action cites 22 examples of living conditions it contends are unacceptable, ranging from quality of care and food, to poor hygiene and the maintenance of the centres.
“For example, in all the centres, the unwritten norm is that patients who have difficulty walking are forced to wear diapers,” said patients-rights advocate Paul Brunet, head of the Conseil pour la protection des malades. “Why do they have to wear diapers if they are not incontinent? Shame on them. It’s disrespect to human dignity.”
The suit seeks compensatory damages of $250 to $750, as well as exemplary damages of $100, for each month spent within the network by its 37,000 users during the past three years, an award that could add up to a minimum of $500 million.
The class action targets all public long-term centres in the province as well as some private institutions where the CPM was able to gather complaints from residents. It’s also based on a collection of media stories that paint a gloomy picture, for example, of residents getting one bath a week, being left for hours in soiled diapers and suffocating in rooms without air conditioning.
Brunet blamed the decline of nursing-home care on the health reforms of 2015 that sought to save the health system about $200 million a year by cutting middlemanagement positions.
“Mr. Pilote called me because his neighbour almost died when his breathing apparatus failed. The man died the next day, and Mr. Pilote was afraid he would be next,” Brunet said. “Someone wasn’t there at the right time.”
The decline in services has come to a point where it is now infringing on patients’ constitutional rights, he said. Government officials declined to comment because the class-action suit is likely to go before the courts, said Catherine Audet, press attaché to Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette.
In a statement sent by email, Audet said her government has made major investments to improve infrastructure at long-term facilities and added 14 new nursing homes for a total of $470 million since 2014.
“Never has a government invested so much to improve the quality of life of the people who live there,” she said, from reviewing the food and hiring more staff, to adding a second bath a week for those residents who want it. Every day, hundreds of orderlies, nurses and other health professionals work relentlessly in nursing homes to care for the elderly, she said.
Well, that’s not good enough, Brunet said. The official government response that “we’re doing the best with what we have” whenever his organization complained of poor services in nursing homes just doesn’t cut it, he said.
“I’m sorry, that’s insufficient — according to the constitutional rights of patients to get safe, adequate and respectful service that respects their personal integrity,” Brunet said. “These are charter rights. You can’t limit them because of lack of resources.”
Larochelle, the lawyer handling the suit, said he would not rule out extending the mandate of the legal action to other health facilities that are failing to meet their duties of care.
Anyone interested in participating in the class-action suit, whether nursing home residents or families of patients, can register online at either Larochelle’s website or through the CPM, the patients’ rights group.