For Immediate Release
September 3, 2003
Bethany Care residents paying 40% more for less care
- Nurses to protest at Bethany Care Centre
- 12:15 to 1 pm Thursday, September 4, 2003
- Outside the front entrance 916 – 18A St. NW
Registered nurses will be protesting cuts in staffing at Bethany Care Centre in Calgary tomorrow. Bethany Care has just completed cutting 28 Registered nurses positions. Nurses are concerned that Alberta’s largest, 460 bed, long-term care facility will not be providing the same levels of care to its high acuity residents.
“The Alberta government devalues people living in long-term care,” says United Nurses of Alberta Local President Jennifer Simon, whose own job has been eliminated. Simon holds the Health Region funders of the service, not Bethany Care, responsible for the cuts to staffing.
“The Calgary Health Region is trying to save a buck at the expense of seniors and young people with long-term disabilities,” she says. “Bethany negotiated with the Region for a full year to keep the RN nursing model. But the Region will not fund us for Registered nurses. It is the Region who refuses to recognize that we have complex care residents.”
Bethany Care has long accommodated residents with multiple medical problems and the highest care needs. Bethany told the nurses they would have to take on lower acuity residents and that the RN positions would be replaced by less qualified Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs). But so far, only 10 new LPNs have been hired. The Centre also cut nursing attendant staff.
Simon says there is no evidence that some of the sicker residents are being discharged or moved to other facilities and that new admissions to the Centre are being screened for lower acuity.
“The rent has gone up by 40% for these people, but the level of staffing being provided has dropped a great deal. These are the residents who need the most attentive nursing care and they simply can’t get it without the budget to provide enough Registered nurses. We’re really worried about their safety.”
Nurses are also concerned about the overall impact on the Health Region. Higher needs patients who cannot be cared for at Bethany will have no place else to go but into expensive acute care beds in hospitals.
“It really makes no sense to undermine the care of the higher acuity residents that Bethany has been providing,” Jennifer Simon says.
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