Is This What We Have To Look Forward to With Privatized Healthcare?

Novo · Jul 19, 2012

Private = More quality, but more about profit margins and greed rather than people

Public = Less quality

There's always a trade off but to be honest I'm for privatized healthcare it would really make people more accountable for their health.

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Jul 19, 2012

Private = More quality, but more about profit margins and greed rather than people
Public = Less quality
There's always a trade off but to be honest I'm for privatized healthcare it would really make people more accountable for their health.

I disagree. Quality and profit are not even on speaking terms. But quantity and profit on the other hand, are BFFs. "How many old, infirm people can we cram into this building? How many of them can be assigned to one unskilled and poorly-paid worker? How much can we charge for laundry and meal services? How can we feed the most people with the fewest dollars? How much of a dividend can we provide to our shareholders this quarter if we eliminate one aide per shift?" Similar pressures are placed on the public system where the budget is arbitrarily set by a third party with no real knowledge of what the issues are.

If private and quality were inextricable, the Stollery Children's Hospital - a completely public facility - would not have patients coming from all over the world for care, or be sending staff all over the world to provide cardiac care. Their outcomes wouldn't be equal to or better than 95% of the other children's cardiac surgical programs in North America, the majority of them being private. They also wouldn't be first on the list for many potential fellowship candidates in neonatal and pediatric critical care, cardiovascular and transplant surgery WORLDWIDE.

As for having to pay for care creating accountability for health, take a look around at the people who are in hospitals and long term care facilities. Most of them are there for things they had no hand in causing. User fees only discourage those who can least afford to wait for treatment too... well... wait for treatment. This only complicates the issue further and results in MORE cost to the system and not less.

Fiona59 · Jul 19, 2012

Private = More quality, but more about profit margins and greed rather than people
Public = Less quality
There's always a trade off but to be honest I'm for privatized healthcare it would really make people more accountable for their health.

Did you even read the links? Would you work for 30% less? Any guesses what the company is doing with the wages they are skimming off what the taxpayer gives them to pay their staff union wages?

itsmejuli · Jul 20, 2012

I lived and woked in the States for many, many years. Trust me, private doesn't equate to better quality.

My question is what is the Alberta gov doing about non-union private companies such as the one that employs me.

Seems home health is non-unionized.

Fiona59 · Jul 20, 2012

Home Care is part of AHS. One of my co-workers casuals in the Edmonton Area HomeCare division. The jobs are there but usually under headings like: LPN-South Division and when you open it up, there it is, a HomeCare slot. Right now is when AHS starts to hire for the Flu Clinics and the School Health Programme. But again, the wordking in the title is weird.

itsmejuli · Jul 21, 2012

A lot of homecare here in Calgary is sub-contracted out to other agencies.

RN58186 · Jul 24, 2012

My Mom is in LTC (privately owned) and honestly, it is appalling. There is one nurse I trust, I don't believe a word the rest of the staff says to me. They are saying that they are turning her q2h at night, but Mom says they don't (my Mom is totally in control of her mind - she would know if they were in). Yet the team leader says "It is charted, it was done." I believe my Mom. And she has 3 non-healing coccyx ulcers to show for all this. I have taken her to the bathroom, and watched the aides at the desk right beside the bathroom reading magazines leave her sitting there for 20 minutes before they will stop their conversation to help. A year or so back she fell on an evening shift and fractured a hip. My sister and I were not notified for over 18 hours, and only then did they call to tell us she was c/o pain so they were sending her to hospital for assessment. The food is beyond gross, I wouldn't try feeing some of it to my cat. Every year at her annual care conference she has one request of the dietitian - stop the canteloupe. She hates it but gets it at least twice a week for an HS snack. Every year they say it will stop immediately - she got it again last night. When I ask why a particular med was D/C'd the answer is always the same: I don't know. I was there one Saturday at shift change. Mom wanted to get up, and as they were getting the lift in place she said her Attends needed changing. One aide went to get Attends and facecloth/towel. The other one pulled down Mom's pants and took off her Attends. Then she looked at the clock and said "It's 3:00. I'm leaving now." She walked out of the room, leaving my Mom naked from the waist down and left the door open when she left. Now, I get that perhaps she had somewhere she needed to get to, fine. But she could have taken 10 seconds to pull a sheet over Mom and tell her someone would be back. Instead she was left with nothing covering her bottom half, with the door open where anyone could see her. (I think the entire facility heard me slam the door...) I have seen insulin given more IM than sc, numerous UTI's that went undiagnosed for almost 2 weeks, even though I knew that was the problem, but it never was passed on to the appropriate staff to get a culture done or for the doctor to be notified. The nurses try hard, but there is too few of them and too many residents. Private care is not the way to go. I see every day the heartbreaking effects of our seniors being herded into LTC facilities that were never meant to house that many people. It is all about doing the bare minimum to meet accreditation standards while spending as little money as possible. I would take my Mom home in a heartbeat if I had some way to manage her care. And we would try changing facilities, but we can't guarantee another one would be any better, and this one is very close to my sister's. She knows if she were to move she would see less of us and so she tolerates the place she is in. :no:

itsmejuli · Jul 24, 2012

I hope you are filing formal complaints with the facility and province.

WildOne · Jul 26, 2012

My Mom is in LTC (privately owned) and honestly, it is appalling. There is one nurse I trust, I don't believe a word the rest of the staff says to me. They are saying that they are turning her q2h at night, but Mom says they don't (my Mom is totally in control of her mind - she would know if they were in). Yet the team leader says "It is charted, it was done." I believe my Mom. And she has 3 non-healing coccyx ulcers to show for all this. I have taken her to the bathroom, and watched the aides at the desk right beside the bathroom reading magazines leave her sitting there for 20 minutes before they will stop their conversation to help. A year or so back she fell on an evening shift and fractured a hip. My sister and I were not notified for over 18 hours, and only then did they call to tell us she was c/o pain so they were sending her to hospital for assessment. The food is beyond gross, I wouldn't try feeing some of it to my cat. Every year at her annual care conference she has one request of the dietitian - stop the canteloupe. She hates it but gets it at least twice a week for an HS snack. Every year they say it will stop immediately - she got it again last night. When I ask why a particular med was D/C'd the answer is always the same: I don't know. I was there one Saturday at shift change. Mom wanted to get up, and as they were getting the lift in place she said her Attends needed changing. One aide went to get Attends and facecloth/towel. The other one pulled down Mom's pants and took off her Attends. Then she looked at the clock and said "It's 3:00. I'm leaving now." She walked out of the room, leaving my Mom naked from the waist down and left the door open when she left. Now, I get that perhaps she had somewhere she needed to get to, fine. But she could have taken 10 seconds to pull a sheet over Mom and tell her someone would be back. Instead she was left with nothing covering her bottom half, with the door open where anyone could see her. (I think the entire facility heard me slam the door...) I have seen insulin given more IM than sc, numerous UTI's that went undiagnosed for almost 2 weeks, even though I knew that was the problem, but it never was passed on to the appropriate staff to get a culture done or for the doctor to be notified. The nurses try hard, but there is too few of them and too many residents. Private care is not the way to go. I see every day the heartbreaking effects of our seniors being herded into LTC facilities that were never meant to house that many people. It is all about doing the bare minimum to meet accreditation standards while spending as little money as possible. I would take my Mom home in a heartbeat if I had some way to manage her care. And we would try changing facilities, but we can't guarantee another one would be any better, and this one is very close to my sister's. She knows if she were to move she would see less of us and so she tolerates the place she is in.

I'm sorry but that's ridiculous. If that's what the staff is doing while YOU'RE there then imagine what they are doing when your not? Yes your mom might be with it but she sounds like someone who wouldn't want to worry you by telling you if something wrong /hurtful happened.

There's much better facilities out there I encourage you to get your mom out of that hell hole! It sounds like a nightmare

RN58186 · Aug 2, 2012

I would really like to move her and at least try somewhere else. But she would rather be close to us - my Mom has a history of people she loves leaving her so she wants desperately to be somewhere that my sister and I can get to regularly. The really scary thing is I have a friend who is a Director of Care at another LTC facility here, and she tells me that this particular one actually has a good reputation?? - which then makes me wonder what the other ones are like...... Tonight she called my sister and asked her to bring her something to eat because she couldn't face the fish for dinner. I shudder to think what the staff does when we aren't around. I actually walked into her room one Wednesday morning and there was staff at the door to the bathroom in her room (Mom can't use the BR because it is an older room and the lift will not fit) with the door ajar and talking. I walked in and the one staff member said "She isn't here, she's at church". I said fine, I'd wait. Threw my purse on the bed and clicked on the TV. The one staff member,when she realized I wasn't leaving looked at me and said "We are trying on uniforms to see if we want to buy them." So they were using my Mom's bathroom as a fitting room. I asked "Don't you have a staff bathroom you can use?" And she replied that they did but it was being cleaned, and that "we only came in here because she isn't here." I was furious and they knew it. I went to the Director of Care and said that the only place she has to call her own is that room and what the hell else are they doing in her room while she was out of it? Would they like someone helping themselves to their home while they were out? Mom did get an apology but it should never have happened. I have overheard the staff refer to me as "the ****** nurse daughter" and I don't care. This is my Mom and I will not ignore things.

Yes, it is a hell hole and I have tried to convince my Mom to move, but she keeps insisting she wants to be close to us. Breaks my heart but I do feel like I must respect her right to choose. She had no choice about going into LTC, and to her being further away from us is worse than putting up with the facility.

I have file many complaints with the facility and my sister is in the process of doing a letter to the Minister for Seniors. I must admit, I have given some serious consideration to contacting the media. Anything to make things better for Mom and the other residents.

Silverdragon102, BSN · Aug 2, 2012

Just shouldn't happen in LTC. I work in LTC here in NS and we have a long queue waiting of people waiting to come to us, the company has several facilities which are the same all over the maritimes. We are small and offer single rooms in small communities and everyone loves it