OLDS — Several Olds and area residents are meeting with Alberta Health Services chair Lyle Oberg Thursday in Edmonton to discuss concerns about how seniors are treated in the health-care system.
The local group is expected to include representatives of the Community Lifestyles Committee (CLC), Olds & District Hospice Society executive director Mary Marshall, and possibly one or two local residents who have experienced disappointing service from people in the health-care system.
The group met with Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange on Nov. 24 in Red Deer.
Rita Thompson, who co-chairs the Community Lifestyles Committee with Bernice Lynn, says that meeting was scheduled to last 45 minutes and ended up lasting about two hours.
During an interview with the Albertan, Thompson said there are several things the group wants to see changed, due to experiences they or someone they know have had.
For example, Thompson said there’s at least one case of where, instead of being admitted to emergency and acute care, an elderly person with dementia was placed in a cell meant to house criminals or drug addicts.
In another case, Lynn fell and broke her hip. When Thompson went to see her in hospital after surgery, she was crying, saying she hadn’t been bathed for days.
Thompson said Lynn was only given wipes and paper towels to cleanse herself.
“How clean can you get with wipes? You know, how many wipes does it take to clean your body?”
Thompson thought of helping Lynn use a shower, but the shower was filled with various items being stored there.
Marshall said her group is asking for two main things.
They want no more than three days to pass from the time an elderly person qualifies for placement in a hospice suite to the time they are actually moved in there.
And they want the wishes of the individual, their family and their doctor to be respected.
Marshall said in some cases it has taken up to two weeks for a hospice client to be admitted.
“That means that that client could pass away while waiting to access hospice supports,” Marshall said.
“It puts a lot of stress on the individual and the family because at this point, they've made the decision to go, and now they're unable to access those supports.
“So they're either in the hospital or they're at home with a caregiver that's having a hard time caring for the individual.”
Marshall said another Olds & District Hospice Society request is that the decision whether/when to admit a person into a hospice suite be made by a committee of qualified people, rather than one person as is the case now, she said.
“I think it's just good business practice for there to be more than one voice at the table and also, what if that person's on holidays,” Smith said.
She said the society would like to see the committee be comprised of a palliative care resource nurse, a discharge nurse and another nurse or a doctor.
A letter to LaGrange drafted by the CLC after the meeting requested the following:
• "Persons with dementia who are admitted to emergency and acute care not be incarcerated in a cell, be restrained or over-medicated."
• "Patients be given the human right to bathe or be bathed and be provided with the necessary supplies in order to do so. This is also necessary to prevent the spreading of infections."
• Standardized assessments of patients for hospice admissions including a maximum three days’ admission from the time the client has been qualified regardless of weekend/weekday.
• That a committee determines hospice placement, not an individual and that the wishes of placement by the patient, their families and the doctor be respected.
The letter noted that the group had asked LaGrange to look into the status of a dialysis building for Olds, stating that $21 million had been set aside for it.
“Specifically we would like to know the following,” the letter said. “When can we expect the building to start and when can we expect programs to begin?”
The letter said the Canada Health Act, which was passed back in 1966 “needs to be examined in the current context, and is it meeting the health care needs of Canadian citizens today?”
The letter also stated that the group believes the province’s recent decision to allow nurse practitioners to open their own clinics is “a big step towards changing the current paradigm.”
Thompson said LaGrange seemed very receptive to group’s presentation during that meeting late last year. That gave her hope.
The fact a meeting has now been scheduled with Oberg also gives her hope that something positive will come out of all this.
Thompson said the group would also like to talk about the decision to break Alberta Health Services into four different silos of operation and what that may mean for patients, especially elderly ones.
“What does that mean and how is that going to improve? I think we want to ensure that that does not lead to four different bureaucracies that are, you know, that don't talk to each other,” she said.
“Then there's the issue of when you make an appointment with your doctor, they ask you what it's for and you're only allowed one thing at a time.
“When you get to be a certain age, there's more than one thing (wrong) you know. So what does that mean? You have to make four different appointments for your four different (health issues)? How cost-effective is that?”
Thompson was asked if she’s confident the group will get a positive hearing and that their requests will be granted.
“Well, we'll see what we get,” she said.
“When we met with the minister, we were only going to have 45 minutes and we got almost two hours.
“And she thanked us. She thanked us quite sincerely for being passionate about what we were there for, so I think we were all pleasantly surprised," adding that going into Thursday's meeting she feel hopeful that they will be pleasantly surprise again.
Marshall voiced similar thoughts.
"I was really pleased (with the Nov. 24 meeting),” she said during an interview. “Adriana seemed very open to listen.
“She also seemed well informed, that she knew many of these concerns and that she had done research on it and was aware that there's a whole bunch of things in our healthcare system that need a repair.
“So we were really pleased, not only that she was receptive, but also she seemed well informed, which none of us were really anticipating honestly.”
Asked if she thought Oberg will be open to the group’s suggestions, Marshall said, “I am unsure what to expect. Adriana was, so I'm hopeful. I'm not really sure. I've never met with this person before, so I don't know how they're going to be.
“All these individuals that came have experienced something in the Alberta Health Services that is really just completely unacceptable.
“We're trying to narrow our focus. I could talk about lots of different areas and I want lots of things to change, but we're just trying to change the high-level things to make it better for the end user.”
Like Thompson, Marshall said the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly.
