SASKATOON – A review of long-term care facilities in Saskatchewan has found inadequate staffing levels in the Saskatoon Health Region has lead to unhygienic and unsafe living conditions for residents.
Some seniors soiling themselves and being bathed only once a week are just some of the issues uncovered in the province-wide review of long term care homes.
“While the challenges and problems identified are not systemic they are widespread enough to cause significant concern,” said Health Minister Dustin Duncan.
But the opposition says the problems have been known for a long time.
“Many of the stories that we were talking about for some time are in this report, when these issues have been brought up in the past this government has said there’s no cause for alarm, I think there is cause for alarm,” said NDP Leader Cam Broten.
The reports are based on tours of facilities by CEOs in each health region, a directive by the Minister last spring.
Residents reported being awoken and dressed for the day as early as 5:30 a.m. and then assisted to bed as early as 5:30 p.m.
There are also concerns about the quality of food.
“I think it relates primarily to the level of staffing that we have, so many of the things that residents and families expressed concern about, our staff are concerned about too and we know that the complexity of the residents in long term care is much higher than it used to be and our staffing levels haven’t kept up,” said Saskatoon Health Region CEO Maura Davies.
The government’s response is a $10 million urgent issues action fund to purchase equipment, improve nutrition and improve response times to call bells.
“Some quick fixes, it won’t ultimately address the larger issue of adequate staffing or the condition of some of our facilities but there are some things we can do with that $10 million across the province,” said Davies.
The Saskatoon Council on Aging says it’s a good start but much more is needed.
“Really we need the government to look at a whole seniors strategy not just health care, that’s important but there’s more to seniors lives than health,” said President Elliot PausJenssen.
Each health region must submit a business proposal in order to receive a portion of the funding by the end of the month with the money expected to be rolled out by December.
The urgent action fund won’t address the over capacity issues that have seen Saskatoon’s hospitals bursting at the seems in recent days, although it is a long term care facility issue the health region says it’s another problem altogether.
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