I really really need to rant....
The entirely of Ontario's long-term eldercare (nursing homes) are under the control of the government. In their haste to make health care fully 'accessible' to everyone, they have placed price-caps (and other heavy regulatory requirements) on all nursing home facilities, including those privately owned. In short, you pay $1500/month for a ward bed, $2000 for semi-private, or $2500 for private, no matter what nursing home you're in. With price-caps, there is little incentive to improve your home's offerings, or to enter the market.
I live in a city that currently has a nursing home-placement waiting list of 700 people. Of those, nearly 200 are in hospital. The latter group is given priority.
My grandmother is now one of those people.
She's in a hospital waiting for a bed. Back in March, we applied to the community-based waiting list for a semi-private or private room at three different homes. We were told at the time to expect the wait to be a year. (It would have been THREE if we'd required a ward bed.)
Now that she is being transferred from hospital, her wait has been cut to roughly 30 days.
But here's the kicker.
While she is on the wait list for three nursing homes, there is no guarantee that she will be placed in any one of them. In fact, due to the popularity of the homes we chose, it's likely a bed won't open up soon enough. The rule is that she must take the first available bed that opens in the city. If it's on her list, great; if not, oh well.
We wanted a home with an attached retirement home for my grandfather. In two weeks, they will have been married 66 years. We wanted a home that didn't have an accompanying advanced-dementia ward. We wanted a home that was near where she's always lived, so she feels more comfortable. Etc.
Instead, we're going to get whatever they give us.
And if we refuse the bed and decide to wait for a bed in one of her chosen homes? They'll charge us three hundred dollars a day.
(Worse: a girlfriend of mine's grandparents live in Northern Ontario where it is significantly less populated. Since nursing home placement is based on region, her grandfather, who lives in North Bay, ended up in Bracebridge, two and a half hours away. Her grandmother can't drive anymore. Imagine.)
This universal system is supposed to be accessible for all of us. How is it, then, that the precise and exact opposite is true?
Seven hundred people on a waiting list in one city - and a boomer generation only a few years away - equals huge demand. Yet there is absolutely no plan to build a single home in this city in the next five years. Were I to open a 700-bed facility tomorrow - properly staffed and organised - completely solving the city's immediate crisis, they would shut me down and throw me in jail.
The state of eldercare in Ontario, and the arrogance that drives our politicians to retain their monopoly in spite of plain-as-day reality, is downright immoral. I hope every last one of those motherfuckers rots in hell for what they are doing to my family.
The entirely of Ontario's long-term eldercare (nursing homes) are under the control of the government. In their haste to make health care fully 'accessible' to everyone, they have placed price-caps (and other heavy regulatory requirements) on all nursing home facilities, including those privately owned. In short, you pay $1500/month for a ward bed, $2000 for semi-private, or $2500 for private, no matter what nursing home you're in. With price-caps, there is little incentive to improve your home's offerings, or to enter the market.
I live in a city that currently has a nursing home-placement waiting list of 700 people. Of those, nearly 200 are in hospital. The latter group is given priority.
My grandmother is now one of those people.
She's in a hospital waiting for a bed. Back in March, we applied to the community-based waiting list for a semi-private or private room at three different homes. We were told at the time to expect the wait to be a year. (It would have been THREE if we'd required a ward bed.)
Now that she is being transferred from hospital, her wait has been cut to roughly 30 days.
But here's the kicker.
While she is on the wait list for three nursing homes, there is no guarantee that she will be placed in any one of them. In fact, due to the popularity of the homes we chose, it's likely a bed won't open up soon enough. The rule is that she must take the first available bed that opens in the city. If it's on her list, great; if not, oh well.
We wanted a home with an attached retirement home for my grandfather. In two weeks, they will have been married 66 years. We wanted a home that didn't have an accompanying advanced-dementia ward. We wanted a home that was near where she's always lived, so she feels more comfortable. Etc.
Instead, we're going to get whatever they give us.
And if we refuse the bed and decide to wait for a bed in one of her chosen homes? They'll charge us three hundred dollars a day.
(Worse: a girlfriend of mine's grandparents live in Northern Ontario where it is significantly less populated. Since nursing home placement is based on region, her grandfather, who lives in North Bay, ended up in Bracebridge, two and a half hours away. Her grandmother can't drive anymore. Imagine.)
This universal system is supposed to be accessible for all of us. How is it, then, that the precise and exact opposite is true?
Seven hundred people on a waiting list in one city - and a boomer generation only a few years away - equals huge demand. Yet there is absolutely no plan to build a single home in this city in the next five years. Were I to open a 700-bed facility tomorrow - properly staffed and organised - completely solving the city's immediate crisis, they would shut me down and throw me in jail.
The state of eldercare in Ontario, and the arrogance that drives our politicians to retain their monopoly in spite of plain-as-day reality, is downright immoral. I hope every last one of those motherfuckers rots in hell for what they are doing to my family.
