Rally demands national long-term care standards following COVID deaths
By Tim Kalinowski on April 28, 2021.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDtkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com Friends of Medicare hosted a virtual rally on Zoom and Facebook Tuesday to demand publicly administered national long-term care standards in the wake of over 1,327 deaths in Alberta’s long-term care facilities due to COVID-19 in the past year.Friends of Medicare hosted the Alberta event, and were joined across the country by other virtual rallies in other provinces for a National Day of Action of Canadians United for Long-Term Care Standards.
Friends of Medicare executive director Sandra Azocar led off the rally in Alberta with a scathing indictment of both the federal and provincial governments for allowing a proliferation of for-profit seniors’ care facilities that, in her view, put the desire for profit above the healthcare needs of vulnerable seniors. Azocar said the failures of care facilities to safeguard the lives of seniors in their care over the past year has created “a moral obligation for meaningful change.”
“However,” she added, “our political leaders have failed to lead.”
Azocar stated the federal government seems intent on abdicating its responsibility to create national standards for long-term care facilities by throwing the question to the care industry-led Health Standards Organization and the Canadian Standards Association, and despite promising $3 billion over five years to help address the failures of that system has not bound provinces to meet national long-term care standards to receive the funding.
Azocar said national standards should comply with the Canada Health Act.
“In the name of provincial jurisdiction over healthcare delivery, including long-term care, the federal government intends to leave it up to each province and territory to determine how changes are eventually applied in their long-term care sectors,” she said. “In spite of the fact that a number of provincial governments are entangled with the for-profit, long-term care industry, which is notorious for prioritizing profit over providing much-needed care.”
Azocar said COVID-19 has exposed forcefully, much to the pain and sadness of the families of those seniors who have died from the illness in long-term care, the many glaring problems with the current system which predate the pandemic.
“COVID-19 has laid bare longstanding issues in continuing care,” she stated, “which Friends of Medicare and other advocates have been sounding the alarm over for decades.”
Azocar said national long-term care standards should include clear staffing requirements, better quality of care, and meaningful accountability which takes profit as a motivation out of seniors’ care. They should also be, she said, reported in public legislation or, at minimum, a federal-provincial-territorial funding agreement with conditions and expectations built in which is governed by public oversight.
“Canada’s health coalitions, we have proposed a long-term care program which obeys the five principles of the Canada Health Act under a new, long-term residential care act that would include public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, accessibility, and portability,” she stated. “Plus three new criteria: quality, accountability, and public, not-for-profit delivery.” Follow @@TimKalHerald on Twitter 4
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