Losing Ground

In recent years, widely reported deaths of two seniors in a long-term care home has kept the quality of health care in these facilities top of mind.1 Three key issues in the debate over long-term care (LTC) in the province are: •. the availability of LTC beds, •. the quality of care provided, and •. the role of for-profit companies. [...] Moreover, the report pointed to two existing programs in the province that served as promising models of how to transform the delivery of senior care: the Comprehensive Home Option of Integrated Care for the Elderly (CHOICE), and the Seniors’ Lodge program. [...] This compares to the 14,449, 14,613, and 14,554 beds that existed in those years, respectively.7 Therefore, between 78% and 93% of the LTC beds in the province were accounted for in each year of the survey. [...] The relentless shrinking of the number of LTC beds per senior has greatly reduced the province’s ability to adequately meet the health care needs of its most frail seniors. [...] Chart 5: Hours of Direct Care Provided by Ownership Type 16 Losing Ground: Alberta’s Residential Elder Care Crisis Critically, over the three years of data no type of facility met the level identified by a landmark US study as the minimum required to limit preventable decline in the health of residents.