Families should not be health care's dumping ground

At Monday's debate in Red Deer for leadership of the Alberta NDP, it was difficult — make that impossible — to separate the candidates according to their platforms. They all agreed on everything.

Among the things they agreed on: the governing Tories have been unethically downloading their responsibilities in health care to municipalities — and especially to the elderly and to the family members who care for them.

We've all heard about the “sandwich generation.” They're the demographic who just finished working two jobs to pay for day care through college for their children. Now that their children are older and more independent, the parents can begin to pay — in time and in money — to help with continuing care for the aging grandparents.

The government calls it “aging in place.” But the caregivers can call it just one more tough sandwich to chew on.

The news story in Thursday's Advocate (Region short 70 beds) is an example of both the Tory program, and the Wildrose Party response to it. Both are lacking, in my view.

To make the criticism fair, as much as I pressed for numbers and specifics from the NDP at the debate (I was the moderator for the evening), I didn't get much of either. But we'll look at what we know now.

First comes the jaw-dropper: despite a chronic shortage of long-term care beds for seniors who need them, our region has 64 fewer of them this year than last.

Wildrose MLA and health critic Kerry Towle makes a good point in that despite her repeated questioning over two years, the government repeatedly denied they were closing any long term care beds.

Sense a discontinuity there? Pick up your jaw, so you can drop it again. Last week, Alberta Health Services CEO Vickie Kaminski confirmed they were abandoning a plan to actually close 1,000 long term care beds over four years.

So if you were sitting in the Emergency ward recently, or trying to get an elective surgery scheduled, part of the reason things were taking so long is that seniors in active care hospital beds can't get into substantially cheaper and better-suited long term care beds.

And there was actually a plan to cut them back? How's that supposed to work?

Part of the answer is that in Alberta there is health care, and there is health care, and there is the care provided by families to make up the gap between the two.

Aging in place is a great concept. As I get older and my faculties diminish, I plan to make full use of it.

The Wildrose solution is to put another $50 million into home care services, to make aging in place work better.

It's cheaper (and much more pleasant for most) for seniors who need some help with day-to-day needs to stay in their own home, and to have professionals come in regularly to check on your diet, your hygiene, to make sure you're taking medications properly (who can read that fine print anyway?) . . . and likely to eventually recommend when it's time you moved out.

When aging in place fails (and it fails earlier for seniors who don't have adult children living nearby), there is supported living. In this event, seniors live in specialized apartments, but with some autonomy.

The government is pumping up that aspect of care as well. In the past five years, Alberta has added 4,100 more continuing care beds to its roster.

But neither the government nor the Wildrose tackle the immediate problem.

There are people in Red Deer General Hospital right now in an extremely expensive active care bed, who are waiting for a long-term care bed to “open up.” You know how this happens in Alberta; don't ask for whom the bell tolls.

In Alberta, it apparently occurs to neither the government nor the Wildrose that you can “open up” some long term care beds by adding them to the system.

A decade or so ago, it was proposed that specialized long term care beds be added in a new building, for the more than 100 aging and severely handicapped patients then living at the Michener Centre.

The old, inefficient buildings housing these people would be closed, and Michener Centre would move into history.

As those beds “opened up” there would be spaces for respite care for handicapped people in the community who were going through rough spots, and who needed some close attention.

Later on, some spaces could be used for seniors with dementia needing long term care, but not a hospital bed.

The Ralph Klein government killed the idea, and we are left with the abhorrent mess we have now.

To my last sentient breath, I plan to make use of all aid as I age in place. But meantime, we need solutions for people who need appropriate care right now.

It is not unexpected that families should help to care for themselves. But there comes a point when families are squeezed into a sandwich of stress, guilt, frustration and anger that they can no longer reasonably handle themselves.

It's not right that governments should cut budgets by downloading their part of social responsibilities onto families.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at Readersadvocate.blogspot.ca