Skip to main content

The future for long-term care looks grim: Mass privatization

Photo: LOLren
As with hospital beds, the government and other proponents of  the near freeze in new long-term care beds suggest that home care can take up the slack.

Does this stand up?  Well, let's take even a very aggressive version of this theory.  Say that 25% of all people in LTC could be dealt with through home care.   (Currently, that would mean evicting 19,250 LTC residents, which is hardly realistic!)

As noted in the previous post, the demographics of the province are rapidly changing, with huge growth in the elderly population, now and into the years ahead.

A 2011 study the Conference Board concludes "based on Statistics Canada‘s reported utilization rate by age and the Government of Ontario‘s population projection, it is estimated that by 2035—when boomers are 71 to 89 years old— 238,000 Ontarians will be in need of long-term care."  That is 161,000 more than the 77,000 LTC beds existing now.  

If we somehow can subtract 25% from 238,000 we still need 178,500 LTC beds.  That's 101,500 more beds than now.   If we assume that the wait list gets worse than the  current 19,000 person wait list-- to say 25,000 -- we still need 153,500 beds.  That is 76,500 more beds than the current 77,000.

In other words, even giving these generous assumptions to our opponents, we would still need to build, on average, 3,326 new beds each year until 2035 (76,500 beds / 23 years).

Over the last seven years we have averaged about 319 beds per year.

In other words we still have to increase the rate of new LTC bed creation by 1042% (3,326 / 319).

Barring that, we are going to face mass privatization and private provision of long-term care, as the elderly are forced into other options like retirement homes.

And that for a health care sub-sector that is particularly ill-suited to private payment or private insurance.
Labels:

Comments

  1. LeftwordsJanuary 3, 2013 at 12:55 PM

    A pretty good example of what this policy will mean was illustrated today in an Ottawa Citizen article on the pressure being placed on one elderly hospital patient to move to a private retirement home. See http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Daughter+fights+Ottawa+Hospital+plans+discharge+ailing/7767363/story.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
16 comments
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more