The release of yet another health care vision for the province should alert Albertans to carefully watch what government is doing with our public health system, says the United Nurses of Alberta.
“This government and health minister Ron Liepert have been very secretive about their health care plans,” says United Nurses of Alberta President Heather Smith. “The new 2020 document remains vague, but there are some disturbing indications they continue to pursue private for-profit health delivery. This looks more like vision 1920 than it does progress for the future.”
Long-term care services are one example mentioned in Vision 2020. The statement cites the example of the Lethbridge area, where “the percentage of patients in long-term care (nursing homes) in the Lethbridge area has decreased from 85 per cent to 50 per cent.”
“They closed nursing homes in the Lethbridge area and moved residents, who had been medically assessed as needing nursing home care, into lower-standard assisted living,” notes Heather Smith. “This brings down numbers, but it is NOT a success for these residents, who end up with less care, and paying out of pocket for far more of their needs.”
Demand is growing for all types of long-term care, including full service nursing home care for individuals with high needs. We continue to have many in-patients in our crowded hospitals who are waiting for openings in nursing homes.
“The province can’t close auxiliary hospitals and nursing homes and say it’s all assisted living. Some residents need more care, and they are in expensive acute care hospital beds now.”
“The Vision here has some other overtones that many Albertans have long been very concerned about,” Heather Smith says.
A key component in “2020” is moving health services out of hospitals into what they call “short stay, non-hospital facilities and other clinic-type arrangements as an alternative to hospitalization”.
The term “non-hospital facilities” has so far referred to for-profit hospitals like HRC in Calgary.
The document also wants to boost “community-based services such as physician clinics and urgent care centres”. “Community-based” has usually referred to private, for-profit services in Health and Wellness documents. In most Canadian studies and recommendations, however, “community-based” usually means public ownership and control, location in the community that’s being served and even community boards.
“Moving from public hospitals to services in for-profit private clinics or hospitals is not going to save anyone money,” says Heather Smith. “As we have seen demonstrated by the recent national study, the growth of private clinics leads to higher costs for citizens and to longer waiting times when health professionals are pulled out of public services.”
Smith points out that a public acute care hospital has all the services under one roof: xray, diagnostic services, doctors, nurses, treatment facilities and pharmacies.
“With separate clinics, people already get shuffled around from doctor’s office to labs, to diagnostics with waits at every step. We tend to forget how efficient our public hospitals are for sick people.”
UNA does commend the government for acknowledging the health workforce shortage and particularly the shortage of nurses as a major problem facing our health system.
“We are eager to work with the government on solutions to the workforce shortage,” says Heather Smith. “We provided Mr. Liepert with a plan, and we are ready to meet as soon as possible to get solutions rolling.”
“Vision 2020 is a carefully crafted document designed to lull Albertans into believing nothing significant is changing in health care,” says Heather Smith. “The truth is when the government says this is “not about the private delivery of health services” it precisely is about exactly that.” |
