FIX NEEDED FOR SENIORS CARE WOES

There can be only one reasonable response from our provincial government to the utterly damning indictment embedded in the survey of seniors’ residential care facilities released Tuesday by B.C.’s seniors advocate.

What will it do to fix the way care is delivered to seniors who built this province with their sweat and taxes? When will it address what is obviously a serious problem in failed oversight? Who is accountable for this situation?

Let’s see, of 292 government-funded facilities, 232 didn’t meet the ministry’s own minimum staffing guidelines. They provide for each senior resident to receive a minimum of 3.36 hours of care per day to help with such basic necessities as using the toilet, bathing and eating. Please note, that’s the minimum.

And it’s not as though nobody saw this coming. In January, the senior’s advocate observed B.C.’s population over age 75 has increased by 10 per cent since 2012 while residential care beds increased by only 3.5 per cent.

Now we have spectacles such as in Nanaimo where a private 150-resident facility this week fired its entire staff, from nurses to care aides, because the Edmonton-based owner says a financial environment of chronic under-funding by the province makes profitable operation impossible. It’s the second time in two years the entire staff has been laid off and rehired for the same reason.

But it gets worse. As a provincial average, one in four residents in these seniors’ facilities is diagnosed as being depressed — yet one in two is receiving anti-depressant drugs. One in three is on anti-psychotic medication without having

This sounds more like North Korea’s repressive prison system than a care program ...

been diagnosed as having a psychotic condition. One in 10 is under some form of physical restraint. This sounds more like North Korea’s repressive prison system than a care program in a progressive democracy.

These senior citizens are supposed to receive physiotherapy, a minimum of 15 minutes of recreational therapy and a minimum of 15 minutes of physical or occupational therapy every seven days. By comparison, the minimum standard for physical and recreational activity in prison is one hour per day. The report suggests that, provincewide, fewer than 14 per cent of residents in seniors’ care facilities are receiving physiotherapy, about 75 per cent don’t receive the minimum recreation therapy, and more than 90 per cent don’t experience the minimum for occupational therapy.

Citizens may be forgiven for wondering what the heck has been going on.

Where’s the ongoing oversight? Of the near 80 per cent of seniors’ residential facilities that don’t meet minimum government standards for staffing, three out of four is a for-profit private business rather than one operated by a charity or a provincial health authority. However, the report also shows 23 of the 25 care facilities providing the lowest number of staffing hours in the Metro region were under provincial jurisdiction.

What needs to be done? First, the premier and the cabinet need to address the matter forthrightly and honestly. There will be those who seek political gain from the government’s discomfiture, but this is too important a problem for petty partisanship. Second, it seems clear government must move swiftly to provide funding adequate to increase staff levels, increase training and evaluate service delivery by administrators.

No seniors facilities should have minimum standards lower than those acceptable for prisons. This is not North Korea, it’s beautiful B.C.