Advocate calls for more hours of care, training, increased wages in audit on long-term care sector in N.B.

A senior waiting in hospital for a long-term care bed spent every day asking staff if she could have a banana with breakfast. It was part of her morning routine, when she lived at home.

It never came, not until she broke down and told a student nurse — who went to a convenience store and bought her a bunch.

That nurse relayed the story to Child, Youth and Seniors’ Advocate, Kelly Lamrock.

“I can't imagine the helplessness that somebody feels asking day after day for a tiny comfort when you've lost all of the freedom and independence you spent your whole life chasing,” he said.

Lamrock released his second report of the week Wednesday, this time, a 200-page audit looking into the long-term care system in New Brunswick.

His report “How it all broke” was released Monday, a prequel to this investigation on senior care, called “What we all want.”

It outlines why an overhaul is needed to ensure the safety and viability of the province’s system, and warns if urgent action doesn’t happen, the cost to people’s health and the bottom line will continue to spiral.

“We heard a lot of families saying, ‘I will sometimes wait for hours just to go back to bed when I'm tired,’” Lamrock shared. “We heard the story of someone, a younger person who is disabled, soiled his bed clothes in the night and they found him on the floor because he wound up just throwing the bed clothes off of him because he hit the button for hours and no one came.”

Just some of his recommendations include:

• Establish a number of Long-Term Care Authorities across the province, who will look after the delivery of service to their area, recognizing the linguistic and diverse needs of those citizens.
• Increase “spot” inspections of long-term care facilities.
• Increase the number of daily care hours per resident from 3.3 to 4 hours (the national average).
• Add legislative protection for whistleblowers.
• Develop and standardize training for every worker providing care.
• After that training, increase wages for those skilled workers to retain them in the system ($22-$24/hour).
• Create a clear plan to reduce the number of ALC patients in hospital by June 2024.
• Allow flexibility for benefits so that more seniors can age at home.

Over 300 submissions were received from the public, and 50 from organizations. The advocate’s office conducted over 30 interviews and reviewed 350 casefiles.

The report includes some of those comments received by patients, families, workers and organizations.

“Too many people are taking too many different kinds of medications without being monitored adequately for drug interactions and overdoses. I have counselled many people who have been on over twenty prescriptions that made absolutely no sense as to why. People are placed on pain killers too often without finding out what is causing the pain. Pain is a symptom, not a condition. Restraints are used unnecessarily without any consideration for the person and (their) autonomy,” reads one comment.

Those who work in the care sector everyday say the report outlines exactly what needs to be done.

“We've worked directly with partners in health and health authorities and social development to get people out of hospital in a matter of weeks. What we had to do was build a basket of services around those folks and not just try to jam them into, you know, programs and rules and criteria,” said Janice Seely of the N.B. Special Care Home Association.

Seely says she now hopes the premier makes the decision to administer the change needed — and then 15 key people meet to discuss how it can be done.

“We have the oldest population in Canada, the second highest rate of disability in Canada. If we don't start putting this lens on now, you know we're going to think 2024 was a pretty good year,” said Haley Flaro, executive director of Ability N.B.

The report also outlines how — if benefit programs were more flexible — more seniors could age in their own homes longer.

That’s something Flaro can attest to.

“We have individuals that can't afford modifications to bathe in their bathrooms, so they've been sponge bathing for two years, individuals that are having falls every day when a $2,500 lift chair that's not funded under any of our programs nor the long-term care program as an assistive device. They can't afford it,” she said.

In a statement from the Department of Social Development, a spokesperson simply said they need more time to review the report, and will have more to say on it after.

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