The lack of a sustainable plan for nursing homes in the New Brunswick is cause for concern, and as demand continues to increase, the province’s Auditor General says a bad situation is getting worse.
“Many residents of New Brunswick will eventually need nursing home services,” Auditor General Kim MacPherson said Wednesday.”So we examine the capacity of the province to provide this service to those in need now and in the future.”
MacPherson her findings weren’t encouraging as she released her first report of 2016.
The just over 4,000 nursing home beds in the province are already not enough to keep up with demand. One in about every five acute care hospital beds are currently occupied by a senior citizen waitlisted for a nursing home.
MacPherson estimates that using those hospital beds has cost taxpayers $40 million over the past five years.
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Not meeting standards at the present time means the situation will be difficult to improve in the future, MacPherson said.
“We are going to need something in the range of 11,000 nursing home beds in 20 years time.”
The New Brunswick Association of Nursing Homes Executive Director Michael Keating says a lack of preparation has put the province in this situation.
“For this to have become a crisis is because successive governments have failed to act in the interests of the public and develop a long term plan,” says Keating.
MacPherson gave the government three recommendations for remedying the situation:
- Consult with the Department of Health to develop a comprehensive, long-term plan to ensure the province can continue to provide sustainable services to seniors
- Report publicly on the outcomes of current and future initiatives around services to seniors
- Evaluate whether there is an economic benefit to providing nursing home beds under the public-private model versus the traditional model
Still, MacPherson is quick to point out that this is a challenge that will require careful planning to overcome.
“If the only solution is to build beds, given the fiscal situation of the province, the costs are going to grow astronomically,” she said. “It’s already grown 300 per cent, or tripled over 15 years.”
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