US studies show for-profit nursing homes inferior

The Canadian study on long term care facilities discussed yesterday noted that US studies have indicated that for-profit long term care homes were inferior to for-profit homes.

In a 5-year examination of complaints in all US states, Stevenson¹² found that for-profit facilities had an almost two-fold greater chance of receiving a complaint compared with non-profit facilities and that chains had a significantly higher rate of complaints compared with non-chain facilities. Harrington and colleagues⁵ also found that for-profit investor ownership predicted 0.679 additional “deficiencies” (a US regulatory measure similar to unmet standards), and chain ownership an additional 0.633 deficiencies per facility compared with non-profit facilities.

On another issue, the Canadian study notes "that non-profit, single-site facilities demonstrate higher complaint rates in comparison with public and charitable facilities. This diversity of performance between public and non-profit groups has been described previously in Canadian research on ownership and quality in nursing home populations. One study found that BC hospitalization rates for care-sensitive conditions in publicly owned or hospital-based facilities were significantly lower than in both for-profit and non-profit single-site facilities.²² A more recent study from British Columbia suggested that these differences may be related to the higher staffing levels in publicly owned facilities as compared with both for-profit and non-profit single-site facilities.^23"

^{The full study can be found by clicking here.}

Comments

Too many public sector workers in Ontario?

Opponents of public services often try to portray the public sector as having grown disproportionately. In fact, since 1976, the number of public sector employees has not quite kept pace with the population. In 1976, the number of public sector employees in Ontario as reported by Statistics Canada averaged 830,800. By 2012, the number had increased to 1,330,700 -- a 60.2% increase. That sounds like significant growth -- true. But the population has increased from 8,413,779 in 1976 to 13,505,900 in 2012, a 60.5% increase. In other words, population growth has run slightly ahead of the growth in public sector employment. In 1976, close to 10% of the population worked in the public sector. It stayed pretty much this way until the Mike Harris government came to power when it dipped below 9%. It returned close to the historical range in the last six years or so, declining in 2012 to below the 1976 averag...

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data. This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization. Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion. That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year. The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million. In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staﬃng. Less and less of hospital spending is on staff. Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development. It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staﬀ per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staﬃng capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog