Healthy Elderly Get First Crack at Nursing Homes

After a series of articles in the Toronto Star last year highlighted the manner in which the elderly suffer from poor care in Ontario hospitals and abuse in Ontario nursing homes, we learned the true reason for the cause for congestion and long waits for the sickest of the elderly.

Lo and behold, our nursing homes, which we as taxpayers fund, are playing games with both the elderly and the families that must care for them: they are choosing the healthiest of the elderly to populate their facilities, while those that need it the most, are left behind in hospitals, who in turn, threaten families and elderly with illegally inflated fees, despite the fact that the Premier and the Minister of Health both stated that fees should not exceed $50. Sounds like a tag-team wrestling match, with nursing homes and hospitals teaming up, only we are the ones being pummelled to the ground, face-first, with our hands and feet tied behind our backs.

Shameful. Dishonest. Not Acceptable. This government and its lack of oversight must be challenged.

The easiest way to ensure that there is transparency and a forum for citizens to complain about one of the most essential of human rights, as protected under our Charter of Rights, is to allow the Ontario Ombudsman to oversee and investigate into all areas of healthcare. Today, the office of the Ombudsman cannot investigate complaints against the following:

• 
  court decisions
  


• 
  doctors
  


• 
  hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities
  


• 
  school boards & universities
  


• 
  lawyers
  


• 
  police
  


• 
  federal government programs or decisions
  


• 
  private companies & individuals

Why shouldn't nursing homes, hospitals and doctors have objective oversight? Only through an external mechanism can we truly have accountability and responsibility in what are growing areas of concerns. Self-regulation through Ontario College of Physicians, or Ontario Long-Term Care Organization or, Ontario Long-term Care Association, has not proven to be sufficient in the protection of our needs, rights and health care.

We can collectively make change happen. My motivation stems from my father's last years' being cared by some of the best minds in terms of medicine, but also by some that were found lacking in both requisite experience and compassion, and in facilities that represented some of the worst parts of the Ontario healthcare system. I also want to be able to look my mother in the eye and know that I am doing what I can to stand up for their rights.

Your MPPs need to be reminded that we want more, not less protection and oversite.

Do you care enough to contact your MPP and voice your concern?