Duane Hicks
Advocating for
elderly patients
being denied care
Representatives of the Ontario Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists, along with the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE, are in the midst of a provincial campaign to advocate for elderly patients who are pushed out of hospital while they are acutely ill or who are denied acute care services they need.
Patients also are being denied access to services like speech-language pathology (for assistance with swallowing and speech) following a stroke because they are discharged earlier than they should be—without treatment or the appropriate follow-up.
And with the provincial election coming up Oct. 6, they want the public to ask their local candidates what they plan to do about it.
Judy Bain, regional vice-president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/CUPE, said the province has lost 19,000 acute care beds out of the hospital sector in the last 15 years.
“For us, that’s a real issue, not only in terms of losing good-paying jobs but the fact there’s that many less beds in the province,” she noted.
“Currently, we’re finding that the Ontario hospitals are running at a staggering 98 percent occupancy rate, which is more than what any hospitals staff for,” added Bain, who came from Kenora to visit Fort Frances last Thursday.
“Most hospitals staff for 80 percent occupancy, so to continue to run at that is hard on staff in terms of workload,” she remarked.
“And from a patient care end, it’s very frustrating for the patients and families because a lot of time they find themselves waiting in ER for a bed, or waiting on the stretcher.
“Basically what we’re saying is this real shortage of acute care beds has put tremendous pressure on hospital administrators and discharge planners and physicians to discharge the patients to free up the beds,” Bain said.
“So we’re hoping that, categorically, when they’re looking at who’s in the beds, they’re not just pushing seniors out of the beds, minimizing their illness and thinking they’re not really belonging in an acute care bed.
“They see them more as ‘bed blockers,’ and they should go into long-term care beds, which isn’t really the truth. . . . There are some seniors that actually believe they are deprived of acute care services because of who they are.”
Bain admitted the acute care bed situation is not as dire here as in southern Ontario, where there was one case of a 97-year-old woman forced from her hospital bed to a retirement home and a second where a male senior was discharged from hospital to a retirement home and starved to death because he was unable to feed himself.
“I think until you have to go through the system, or have to use the system, I don’t think you see all the faults,” she said.
“It’s really a fault-challenged health-care system now, and depending on what government of day is in and what their party platform is, the hospital has to keep changing,” she argued.
“Sad as it is, we’d all like to believe it’s about patient care,” added Bain. “But the reality, like every business these days, is the bottom line.
“We feel somebody’s got to advocate for seniors, as well as people in general who don’t have anybody to stand up,” she stressed.
Bain said with the election imminent, they want people to make an educated vote when it comes to health care.
“All three parties have indicated to us that they are suggesting further bed cuts and further cuts in the services and health care,” she remarked.
“Canadians fully pride themselves on their health care but there’s not going to be a whole lot left, and at what point do we take a stand and say, ‘This is the hill we’re going to die on the save our health care and preserve it,’ and at what cost because it does come to a cost.
“It frustrates me a little bit because everybody makes it sound so simple,” she continued. “‘We’ll just influx doctors and nurses into the hospital, and put beds into the hospital.’
“But no one tells you how we’re going to get the doctors, how we’re going to get the nurses, and all of those things.
“I think you have to challenge the politicians for their plans,” Bain argued. “‘How are you gonna do this?’
“I know, locally, and in our area, we’re really challenged,” she warned. “It’s a recruitment issue to get a doctor to come to your area.
“And ERs are overwhelmed because there’s so many orphaned patients that don’t have doctors that have to use the ER like a doctor’s office.”
Bain said the election is an opportunity to ask the politicians: “What’s the plan?”
“How are you going to deal with it, not just today but five years out, 15 years out,” she said. “Because the push is on home care strategies, which is great, but if we all still operate as independent silos—the hospitals operate one way, and home care and health units operate in their silos—how do we share resources for the good of the patients and the families?
“Because that’s who’s bearing the brunt of the home care strategies—families.”
Bain said a hotline—1-888-599-0770—has been established for patients or their family members to call to report their experiences.
A report incorporating experiences reported to the hotline will be issued in the new year.
Bain said the report will challenge the policy-makers of the day, and get them to look at it and maybe even make a legal challenge with it.
She noted the solution is not necessarily about how many more beds it takes to make it right or how much money is needed.
“I think it’s all about being accountable and using our money smartly and efficiently, and delivering effective patient care using the right discipline to treat the problem,” Bain argued.
“It’s always nice throw money at it, but that sometimes doesn’t solve the problem.”