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Acute-care bed closure all about money: critics |
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Written by Dave Mabell Lethbridge Herald
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Wednesday, 16 September 2009 |
Closing 300 acute-care beds in Alberta’s major cities should save money. But the provincial government’s decision — announced Wednesday by its health chief — will shift 300 seniors to homes with lower-skilled staff, health advocates warned.
And it won’t do much to remedy a chronic shortage of hospital beds right across the province, they add. But if it cuts as much as expected from Alberta’s health-care budget, it will put more money into the pockets of the chief, Stephen Duckett.
Duckett, an economist hired in Australia, has been announcing reorganization and cuts since he was brought here by the Conservative government. In Wednesday’s announcements, he confirmed plans to mothball 300 acute beds in Calgary and Edmonton hospitals over the next three years.
That will save about $50 million over three years, officials say. Duckett’s contract includes a bonus plan for budgets cut.
The beds will be mothballed as long-term care patients are shifted to nursing care or assisted-living facilities now planned or under construction, Duckett said. Some beds could be made available to handle H1N1 patients, however, and some could be used to reduce pressure on the two cities’ emergency wards once long-term patients are moved out.
Those announcements followed one earlier this month in Edmonton, saying 150 long-term beds will be closed at Alberta Hospital Edmonton, a mental health facility.
In Calgary, meanwhile, health officials have confirmed no staff will be hired to open a new 140-bed wing at the Peter Lougheed Hospital, just being completed at a cost of $222 million. A 100-bed expansion at Rockyview Hospital, opened one year ago, also resulted in a zero gain.
And even more beds have been cut in Edmonton, said Bridget Pastoor. The Lethbridge East MLA was in Edmonton, where Duckett listed the latest closures.
In 1994, prior to Alberta’s population boom, Pastoor pointed out Alberta had more than 9,400 acute-care beds. That was cut to 6,800 by the start of this year and now she said more than 500 closures have been ordered since the start of the year.
“We’re just going down and down, despite the huge increase in population.”
Duckett’s goal, she said, is to shift as many seniors as possible out of the public health-care system and into profit-making seniors’ facilities.
“What kind of care are they going to get,” she asked. Pastoor said Duckett was not clear whether the 300-plus seniors would be shifted from hospital care to a nursing home like the Edith Cavell — or to a “designated assisted living” facility where they’d be billed for many routine services.
“They’re downloading these costs on the sick and the old and the vulnerable, who can’t fight back.”
“They’re obviously transferring these people to the private sector,” said Michael Cormican, Lethbridge chair for the Friends of Medicare. “But where is the continuity of care?”
Cormican, a longtime mental health worker, said the 150 men and women being sent away from the mental health facility could find it impossible to survive in a non-public facility. They’ll be offered space in a new care centre being built by the Caritas (Catholic) organization, officials said.
But their bill for that kind of accommodation would considerably exceed their monthly AISH cheque, Cormican said.
“Where are they going to get that kind of money?”
Kevin Taft, Alberta Liberal health critic, described Wednesday’s cuts as the equivalent of losing a major hospital.
“This is like closing the Misericordia Hospital, it’s like closing 300 acute-care beds in Edmonton and Calgary,” he said.
“Where are those people going to go? They’re going to get pushed out into the community, into services, frankly, that are largely privatized.”
Alberta has had the most crowded major hospitals for years, Taft charged.
“They routinely have more patients than they have spaces, so people end up on stretchers in the hallways, spending days in emergency rooms, or health-care professionals are forced to wedge three patients into a room that is designed for two.”
It’s appropriate to expand community services, he said, so long-term patients who are occupying acute-care beds can move out of hospitals.
“But then the government is wiping out any gains in acute-care beds by closing them down."
The Conservative government wants a private-public mix of facilities, he said, like Duckett championed in Australia.
“They want to offload the cost of health care onto the individual, in order to balance the books they have so badly mismanaged.”
Officials said the latest plan depends on 15 private operators building 775 assisted living or nursing care spaces in the two cities and accepting elderly patients who are waiting for space in a public nursing home or auxiliary hospital.
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