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451Privatization
and COVID-19: A Deadly Combination for Nursing Homes
of the care once provided in hospitals must now be provided in
nursing homes.
Paralleling these reforms is population aging. Although most
older people are in reasonable health and can continue to live at home,
a significant proportion are surviving with multiple, severe chronic
conditions that require skilled support of the kind provided in nurs-
ing homes. The number of beds available has not kept up with the
verified need. One indicator is wait times for admission. For example,
once a person qualifies as needing 24-hour care, the median wait time
for being offered a place in Ontario is over 150 days.5
The care deficits that remain cause many to seek private care.
Not only does homecare shift significant costs and work to individu-
als and families, those who cannot get into a nursing home have to
pay a retirement home anywhere â. . . from $3,000 to roughly $7,000 a
month for basic care. These numbers can easily climb another $1,000
to $3,000 a month as extra care is required.â6 Within nursing homes
residents are paying for more of their services, such as physiotherapy
and foot care,7 and a growing number of families are paying for pri-
vate companions for their relatives in order to make up for care gaps.8
For-Profit Privatization in Nursing Home Care
The shifts in responsibility, costs, and care work in nursing homes have
been accompanied by a troubling trend towards for-profit chain own-
ership, especially in the big provinces. For example, between 2010 and
2016, Alberta lost 335 beds in public facilities while 3,255 were added
in for-profit ones. By 2016, 43% of the beds were in for-profit facilities.9
5. Health Quality Ontario, Long-Term Care Home Wait Times in Ontario (Ottawa:
Health Quality Ontario, last visited 28 April 2020), online: HealthÂ
QualityÂ
Ontario
<https://www.hqontario.ca/System-Performance/Long-Term-Care-Home-
Performance/Wait-Times>.
6. Ted Rechtshaffen, âHereâs What it Costs to Live in a Retirement Home â And the
Bottom Line is Less Than You Might Thinkâ, Financial Post (13 March 2019), online:
<https://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/retirement/heres-what-it-
costs-to-live-in-a-retirement-home-and-the-bottom-line-is-less-than-you-might-
think>.
7. MacDonald, supra note 4.
8. Tamara Daly, Pat Armstrong & Ruth Lowndes, âLiminality in Ontarioâs Long-
Term Care Facilities: Private Companionsâ Care Work in the Space âBetwixt and
Betweenââ (2015) 19:3 Competition & Change 246.
9. David Campanella, LosingÂ
Ground:Â
AlbertaâsÂ
ResidentialÂ
ElderÂ
CareÂ
Crisis (Edmonton:
Parkland Institute, 2016) at 11.
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Titel
- VULNERABLE
- Untertitel
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Autoren
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Verlag
- Ottawa Press
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Abmessungen
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Seiten
- 648
- Kategorien
- Coronavirus
- International