Despite the "carnage" that occurred in some of Ontario's long-term care homes throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, both the federal and provincial governments haven't learned any lessons when it comes to caring for our elderly, says author and journalist Andre Picard.
Rather than provide funding for care that would allow our seniors to remain in their homes as they age, warehousing them in long-term care homes remains the governments' preferred option for elder care, said Picard, who was the guest speaker at the CHATS (Community and Home Assistance to Seniors) York Region South Simcoe annual general meeting and 40th anniversary celebration June 23.
In his new book, Neglected No More: The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada's Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic, the health reporter and columnist for the Globe and Mail exposes how Canada's focus on institutional care rather than much needed home care has failed its elderly citizens.
Despite the large number of deaths, particularly at aged long-term care homes where residents share rooms, the federal and provincial governments don't have "a real eagerness to change fundamentally."
He said that after seeing that there was no money in the federal budget for home care and no increase in the provincial budget, he's "not too confident" that things will change.
Picard said that the current health-care policy is to wait until people are sick or frail to provide care, rather than invest in prevention and community support.
"Structurally what we have is a sickness care system not a health care system. Essentially we have publicly funded acute care insurance in Canada."
Picard referred to the large amount of deaths in long-term care homes during the pandemic as "carnage" — the vast majority of which were preventable — and called long-term care homes during the pandemic "slaughterhouses."
According to a study conducted by Campaign Research Inc. on behalf of Home Care Ontario, 91 per cent of seniors would prefer to stay in their homes as they age rather than enter a long-term care home.
"That doesn't mean those homes are not needed, but it's a reminder that's the last place people want to be. And we don't want to be sending people where they don't want to be, especially if we can do things differently and better — like provide home care," Picard said.
"They want more quality, they want more variety of options they want to be able to stay at home and in the community and we're not giving them that option," he added.
The cost of home care is no higher than the cost of institutional living, he said. He referenced other countries with universal health-care systems that have been able to invest in home care without spending more.
He said that it would be "a tremendous value" if elderly people could be kept out of institutions even just for a couple of extra months and called the lack of funding for home care a missed opportunity politically, economically and in terms of quality of life.
Long-term care homes are often understaffed and residents don't receive the care they need throughout the day. Each year $4 billion to $5 billion is spent privately to provide long-term care residents with extra care at understaffed long-term care homes, he said.
At approximately $100 per hour, the cost of private care comes out to $3,000 a month — the same as long-term care.
He also said that while it's easy to measure the amount of deaths that occurred due to COVID-19, there is no way to measure the extent of other harms that occurred as a result.
"We lost a lot of staff, we stopped programs. And what happened to those folks? They suffered from isolation, they suffered from loneliness. They didn't get adequate care."
When asked if he thinks things will change for the better, Picard said that 150 reports have been made since Canada enacted its current health-care system but it has failed to implement any of the recommendations made in them.
"We don't need more recommendations, we need action."
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