Gov’t owns care home problem
Sooner or later governments must stop blaming previous administrations for their problems.
Of course, New Democrats in this province have argued that time is long past due for the Saskatchewan Party government that was first elected six years ago. They have a point. The Brad Wall government’s excuse that it inherited a massive infrastructure deficit has always been rather feeble, especially given that it was also left with the biggest surplus of any new Saskatchewan government.
Then again, the New Democrats who held power for 16 years also kept blaming all their problems on Grant Devine well beyond any reasonable time period. After all, the last four years of premier Lorne Calvert’s government were pretty prosperous times in Saskatchewan.
Perhaps the rule of thumb should be that governments should stop blaming their predecessors when the problems are either of their own making (i.e. NDP and Spudco) or to which they have contributed.
The Sask. Party’s nursing home strategy surely would fit it that latter category.
Less than a month after Health Minister Dustin Duncan’s damning report on the treatment of seniors and a mere day after the government in its throne speech announced, “We must do better,” questions raised by the Opposition made a convincing case that the Wall government’s decisions have worsened the long-term care situation.
In Thursday’s question period, NDP Leader Cam Broten cited a government decision in 2011 to remove the term “sufficient staff” from the housing and special care home regulations, along with a clause that required that staff “be employed to provide at least two hours of nursing or personal care per guest per day.”
Broten then produced a leaked letter by the human resources director of the Heartland Health Region — written incidentally at about the time health region CEOs were touring every nursing home in the province on their fact-finding mission — which stated: “Achievable workloads must be implemented and maintained” in circumstances when there are staff shortages for various reasons, including “to reduce overtime costs.”
With that, a “priority and discretionary” work function directive also was issued. It said that staff working short-handed can: Skip non-essential bathing; minimize non-essential bed linen changes; skip routine checklists and cleaning duties; limit/alter activities planned for the day and serve cold meals or less intense meals to minimize food preparation time.
Broten’s first question was met with the obligatory response from Premier Brad Wall that the problem is the NDP’s failure to build nursing homes in 1990s — the aforementioned horrifying “infrastructure deficit.” But that seemed almost reasonable compared to the answers we later heard from Duncan.
The health minister, who spoke so passionately about the dignity of nursing home seniors just 25 days ago, told the assembly that his vision for nursing home care was less about “minimum standards” of staffing and more about “personalized standards” for each resident.
Talking to reporters later, Duncan added the regulated “minimum standards” for staffing were written years ago, when most patients required Level 1 and 2 care and had their own parking stalls at nursing homes, instead of the Level 3 and 4 care patients today. This makes little sense. First, it flies in the face of the notion that this must be a problem that extends to the NDP days, when Duncan concedes that the care levels needed by seniors have heightened in recent years, including the past six years under the Wall government.
Second, given his acknowledgment that the scope of the problem has increased, shouldn’t the government be strengthening minimum care standards instead of doing away with them?
Third, even if one buys Duncan’s shaky argument that a “personalized” care program for each resident is better than general minimum care standards, isn’t your “personalized” care still being violated if you are a home-care resident who is not getting your daily hot meal, clean linen or weekly bath because of staffing shortages?
Fourth, if it’s staffing levels that Duncan is hung up on as the care measure, why not simply write down your own “personalized” standards that would likely include hot meals, clean linen and weekly baths?
And fifth, if your government feels it “must do better,” is the answer really to institutionalize a protocol that allows lower care standards during staffing shortages?
The Wall government must do better because this is very much its problem.