BURST
Teri MacKay says that when she first moved her 87-year-old mother into a private pay long-term care home in October at the cost of thousands of dollars per month, Fraser Health told her it would be a two-year wait for a publicly subsidized bed.
Now, however, that wait time has increased to 30 months, and MacKay and her sisters are not sure how they are going to afford to keep their mom Margaret, who has dementia, at a care facility in Surrey for an extra six months at the cost of $9,500 per month.
She reached out to Postmedia after reading an earlier story about Laura Kelly and her mother Barbara Donaldson, who died in hospital in Victoria at the age of 84 after more than seven months in hospital waiting for a long-term care bed.
MacKay accused B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne and Premier David Eby of running away from the problem instead of figuring out a way to ensure seniors get what they need.
“If the funded bed comes in, her cost will be $2,000, and that is doable,” said MacKay. “None of us are capable of looking after her daily needs, and so this is the choice that we had to make for her. She’s been in long-term care since I think it was Oct. 2.”
Besides the ballooning wait time, one of the problems, says MacKay, is that Fraser Health hasn’t done an assessment on her mother since October when she moved into the care home.
She says they also replaced her previous case worker, whom the family really liked, with one that Margaret has trouble understanding.
“It’s a frustrating situation,” said MacKay. “They won’t give you her (wait) number because there’s too many other people who jump the queue because they take a fall. There’s way worse than where my mom is at, and so they used to have a list, a long time ago. But they don’t have that anymore.”
She and her sister Kari are looking at other facilities that might be affordable, but all the available options in the Fraser Valley cost between $8,000 and $12,000 a month and they don’t want to move their mother out of the Fraser Valley.
Fraser Health did not respond to a request for comment by Postmedia in time for publication.
Eby responded to MacKay’s situation Thursday by saying he knows the frustrations British Columbians are facing with the lack of long-term care beds for seniors, but that the reason seven new projects were either put on hold or cancelled is because the costs had spiralled out of control.
He said the problem of a lack of long-term care beds has been known for decades and that the situation is only going to get more pressing as B.C.’s population continues to age.
“When we formed government, we committed to build thousands of long-term care beds to respond to that, which we have done. And it is also true that for seven projects we saw remarkable and unacceptable cost escalation to the point of one project being $1.8 million a bed for a senior,” said Eby.
“Why not just buy every senior in B.C. their own home at that price? The reality is we have to find a way to deliver long-term care beds in a financially sustainable manner, both on the capital side, the buildings, as well as on the service side.”
Brennan Day, the B.C. Conservative long-term care and rural health critic, said that the reality is that there are very few British Columbians who can afford private pay for long-term care at a cost of nearly $10,000 per month.
He said the government promised more support last year aimed at helping seniors stay in their home, but that hasn’t stopped the wait-list for long-term care from growing by 11 per cent year-over-year.
“There will always be people slotting in in front of you who need more advanced care, more rapidly,” said Day. “Your doctor said you need long-term care, but because there are so many people ahead of you on the list that have a greater requirement, medical requirement, they’ll be put ahead of you, which is why the government is very reticent to talk about wait lists and wait times.”
Mary Polak, CEO of the B.C. Care Providers Association, said the current list of 7,829 seniors waiting to get into a home doesn’t even include those who know they can’t afford it or think their family member won’t qualify for assistance.
She said the government and British Columbians need to recognize that the shortage of care for seniors impacts everyone, whether or not they are getting older or supporting an elderly family member.
“There needs to be a recognition across our society that dealing with providing a dignified home for a senior is contributing to the well-being of the rest of our health care system,” said Polak.
“I think for too long people have felt you could separate those issues. Well, you know, I don’t have a senior in my family, I don’t know a senior, doesn’t really affect me because it affects the rest of society, and in particular impacts on the use of our emergency rooms.”