Considering the increasing numbers of seniors, does the government have any plans to offset or prepare that?
Absolutely. In the last two budgets and even in this last budget, which was a balanced budget that was very tight because of low oil revenue, we found an additional $10 million that was specifically for seniors’ care. The budget that was before that, we found additional significant dollars for new home care and pilot projects in Saskatoon, Prince Albert, and Regina that might expand to places like Humboldt in home care called Home First. We’ve also been building new home care, long-term care facilities.
The previous government that we took over closed long-term care beds, which made this challenge even greater. Actually, they were closing long-term care beds and so we started rebuilding. We built 13 new long-term care facilities in eight years and then Amicus was also built in Saskatoon. (There’s) another one happening in Swift Current, but we know more is needed to be done because of the demographics that you’ve referenced certainly, so think you’ll see the government responding to that.
It’s interesting; we have questions – I have questions – about this issue because since we took office from the NDP, we’ve added almost 800 frontline caregivers for long term and integrated care for roughly the same compliment of residents or long-term care patients. So it would be my view then that with many more caregivers and the same number of patients, care should be improving, but we see too many examples where the opposite is true. So we have questions to ask and we want to ask them quickly and get answers quickly because if we’ve added resources, we’re building new long term care facilities, and there are more people on the frontlines, we should have far fewer, if any, of these examples that have been coming forward. So this is going to be a priority for us.
So then is it wise to continue expanding the number of long-term care beds if the quality with the currents are already having issues?
Well, we need them. There are wait lists, so I believe we’re going to need to continue to do the facility expansion and renovation. Some of it’s a matter of improvements; very, very old facilities that need to be improved or replaced. I don’t think we should stop doing that, I think we can move on a couple of fronts.
One, increased home care, we’d like seniors to be able to stay in their home healthy as long as possible. And two, make sure our long-term care experiences are positive. You know the assisted living project that’s being worked on by the community is a great project. In fact, we’re going to be helpful there, not through health, but through Sask Housing. So there’s different areas government can support like assisted living and we’re going to be doing that.
You mentioned before there being questions, so any ideas or answers as to why quality standards aren’t being met in long term healthcare facilities?
It’s an ongoing question we’ve asked since we were elected and we found there were fewer beds and not enough workers and there was a shortage of 900 nurses in the province. We’ve added 2,600 more nurses of every designation. So we’re always asking the question, I don’t want anyone to think we just started asking this question. How are we best using the resources in healthcare? We’ve added resources. Are they being deployed? Are they getting to the frontline? Do we have the balance between administration and frontline correct? If not, how can we improve it?
So the bottom line for us is it’s an ongoing question we’re asking. It’s why we have more home care, it’s why there are some emergency funds in the budget for facilities and I think you’re going to see us continue even in a tough year, but recognizing that there are challenges there and we all have to do a better job of meeting them.
So while you continue asking those questions, how are you going to go about assessing (the responses)?
Well, it happens on a regular basis. There are critical incident reports that occur. We are the ones as a government that directed the CEOs of health regions to tour health facilities, long-term care facilities, and get an inventory of challenges, what’s working really well, what’s not working really well. Those reports have come back. They’ve actually informed or directed government’s response in terms of more resources. So it’s an ongoing process and it needs to continue.
If those reports are already in place, why were things being missed? Why was the quality of care not being met?
Well let’s not forget that there are over 8,000 seniors in care. The ombudsman’s report that (Mary McFadyen) just presented with respect to challenges highlighted 89 cases. That’s a significant number. That gets my attention and has the government’s attention, but there are 8,000 patients in the system— residents. So I would say that there are thousands of seniors and long term care patients that are getting the care they deserve and need.
It’s why there are more dollars in the budget on an ongoing basis. It’s why we’re directing CEOs in the region to get into the facilities, to tour them, to be there regularly through officials and find out what we can do better. The context here is important. That ombudsman’s report highlighted things we need to do better, but 89 were the total number of cases that came forward to the ombudsman; 8,000 plus seniors and long-term residents that are in care. So we also need to give credit to the system and those long-term care providers that are providing thousands of seniors with excellent care.
Considering all that then, what’s going to be the first step or the first area of focus?
Well, we’ve started already. The first priority or area of focus will be to keep seniors in their homes and healthy as long as possible. Home First is a pilot project in its second year. It started in Saskatoon I think and now has expanded to Regina and Prince Albert and I think it might expand further.
We want to continue through other government agencies to support the next preferred thing, which would be assisted living where home care can come to a place perhaps like they might be able to here in Humboldt when we get even more progress on that facility and finally on long term care, the actual facilities, where what we used to call level three and four and probably there should be a level five care added in terms of quantifying the amount of care that’s required by some and that means making sure our facilities are continuing to be replaced.
If we can budget for it and afford it, are we going to rule out adding still more caregivers in addition to the 800 we’ve added since we were elected? No, we can’t rule that out. Those are sort of a three-pronged approach we want to take.
The recent MRI situation. Will you be looking to use that approach in other areas of healthcare (in terms of the privatization option)?
No, not right now. This is a pilot project; we want to see how it works with diagnostics. And you know what, surprisingly, I think there has been debate amongst the public, but hardly anything in the legislature. I think Mr. Broten asked three questions or had a set of questions and that was it. So I was shocked at that.
I think the reason they weren’t asking questions is because the very process we’re proposing as a pilot was what the NDP implemented for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. The Saskatchewan Roughriders and Workers Compensation Board (WCB) clients have a deal where if they need to get a MRI for a player or a client with Workers Compensation, they need to pay for one on the public list. So they get ahead of the list, they pay, but then they have to be able to do one free scan for someone on the public list to shorten that list.
My question back to Mr. Broten when he did ask when he wanted a debate was if you thought it was good enough for the Roughriders or the WCB clients, why isn’t this good enough for everyone else?
We’re going to do a pilot and see how it works … and we’re going to report back to the people in a year. If it doesn’t have an impact on wait lists or there’s not a great interest—we’re not going to pursue this for ideological reasons. We’re trying to innovate. We’re trying to provide some alternatives and … I think that’s part of the challenge that our New Democrat friends face and Mr. Broten faces because they’ve come at this issue strictly from an ideological perspective. They hear the word private and they’re not interested in the end of any sentences.
The reason we have shorter wait times for surgery in the province today is because surgical wait times initiative uses private clinics. We invited them in – it’s in the public system – but we used private clinics and the NDP opposed that as well. What happened? We took the longest wait list we inherited in the country; we now have the shortest wait lists for orthopedic surgery in Canada. So I just think we need to continue to innovate. It’s true in senior care. What’s happening isn’t good enough. What’s happening in acute care is not good enough. A wait list for diagnostics is not good enough. We need to innovate; we need to try some things. We’re not going to go beyond it, but we’re going to see how this works.
