Health authority intervenes at yet another China-owned senior home
Official highlights concerns about insufficient staffing, lack of cleanliness
Sandra Hawkes is watching as health authorities on Vancouver Island have intervened at another senior care home owned by a Beijing company and is wondering why the Fraser Health Authority isn’t taking similar steps in the Lower Mainland.
Her question is partly personal. Hawkes is haunted by memories of the deteriorating care she saw when her late mother lived at Waverly Seniors Village in Chilliwack, including residents’ calls for help being ignored and supplies, such as diaper pads, being rationed.
In 2017, Ottawa approved a $1-billion-plus deal for Anbang Insurance Group to buy Retirement Concepts and its 20 senior care homes, including Waverly.
It was controversial from the start. Critics argued patient care could be harmed under a foreign company that revealed little about who actually owned it, which is a requirement under federal investment rules.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority has recently moved against three Vancouver Island homes run by Retirement Concepts. It appointed administrators to take over operating Comox Valley Seniors Village at the end of September and the Nanaimo Seniors Village in mid-November.
On Thursday, it appointed administrators to take over operations at Selkirk Seniors Village in Victoria, after South Island medical health officer Murray Fyfe highlighted concerns with “insufficient staffing, a lack of overall cleanliness at the site and the operator moving too slow towards full compliance with legislated standards of care.”
The homes are operated by West Coast Seniors Housing Management, a company related to Retirement Concepts.
West Coast’s chief operating officer, Jennie Deneka, said the company has been working with Island Health “to address recruitment and staffing challenges that are impacting our ability to comply with licensing requirements” at the facilities on Vancouver Island.
Since 2002, there have been only eight cases of health authorities taking over a seniors care home, said Isobel Mackenzie, B.C.’s seniors advocate. Of these, five were run by Retirement Concepts, with two of those cases happening before the sale.
“When you examine the data from 2017 and 2018 at Retirement Concepts facilities, for all beds, public and private, it would appear that the funded hours of care are not delivered, across all beds,” said Mackenzie.
There are some things that make it harder to assess whether Retirement Concepts delivers the care they are funded to provide, she said: “They are the largest chain in the province. They are also unique in that they subcontract out the care they provide to a related company.”
Other companies subcontract to third-party firms.
Health Minister Adrian Dix has said that the B.C. government has spent $240 million to improve long-term care in the province, with Retirement Concepts receiving the bulk of that money.
Hawkes’ mother moved into Waverly before Anbang took over Retirement Concepts and died there shortly after the sale was announced.
Hawkes has been unable to determine if the number and degree of complaints about neglect of residents and staff shortages on Vancouver Island are different from what she has been trying to track before and after her mother was a resident at Waverly.
According to public records, Waverly has far outstripped other residential care facilities in Chilliwack in terms of violations of policies and procedures this year.
Hawkes has spent months requesting more specific details about inspections through freedom-of-information requests. This has yielded inspection reports for Waverly from late 2017 and mid-2018 as well as May, July and September of 2019 showing licensing officers making repeated requests for “corrective action” by certain dates.
For Hawkes, details in the July report about staff needing training in “safe feeding practices” really hit home because “for my mother, it was one of the most egregious things, the lack of feeding assistance.”
“I would go in, and she would be in front of a cold breakfast, alone, not eating anything,” said Hawkes.
The report said that “13 (of approximately 70 clinical) staff members received training during the period from 2018-2019. … The facility offers education on safe-feeding practices on an annual basis, however, attendance to these sessions was extremely low. There appeared to be no followup with the large number of staff that did not attend/receive training.”
In a September letter to Hawkes, the Fraser Health board chairman, Jim Sinclair, said that Waverly prepared a plan early in 2018 to address their issues, but subsequent inspections in both May and July of this year showed limited progress.
“Monthly audits and a daily tracking tool were to be created to ensure that all changes in the condition of persons in care were captured. The licensing officer found no evidence that this was completed,” wrote Sinclair.
Anbang has been restructured by the Chinese government and is now known as Dajia Insurance Group.
According to the Financial Times, Beijing is reportedly looking for a buyer for part or all of it.
I would go in, and she would be in front of a cold breakfast, alone, not eating anything.