# Future seniors care



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

One of the things the current situation is making abundantly clear in my opinion is that our system of caring for seniors is just not good enough. Hopefully, after we get through this, it will be looked at and some major changes made. I am not a elder care expert and although I may have some of my own ideas of how it should change re government vs. private businesses, etc. I just hope the 'experts' do push for changes.

We cannot have the kind of things happening that have been, in our senior homes everywhere. Here is just one of the most recent appalling results. Read the differing comments in these reports.









Staff at Ontario facility for vulnerable adults walks out following COVID-19 outbreak


A facility that supports adults with developmental and physical disabilities in Markham said that critically important staff walked off the job Thursday night following a confirmed outbreak of COVID-19.



toronto.ctvnews.ca













Coronavirus outbreak at Markham home for adults with disabilities causes staff to walk off job | Globalnews.ca


Participation House is home to 42 adults with disabilities and as of Friday, had a confirmed 10 residents and two staff members test positive for COVID-19, Debra McLaughlin, a member of the board of directors, told Global News.




globalnews.ca







https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/participation-house-critical-need-ppe-staff-1.5529384



The ONLY thing that seems clear to me that it is utter chaos and there has to be major changes in the future that will insure this kind of thing simply cannot happen again.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Now we are hearing about a seniors home in Quebec where 31 people have died. It looks like staff left and most died from NEGLECT, only 5 from Covid19.








Police investigation underway after 31 seniors die at residence in Montreal's West Island


The deaths of 31 elderly residents at a long-term care home in Montreal’s West Island amid the COVID-19 pandemic has led to police and public health investigations as families scramble to speak to their loved ones.



montreal.ctvnews.ca





What I find noteworthy is that health authorities cannot just walk in the door and have access to everything including records, without permission from the owners. That to me is just insane.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Now we are hearing about a seniors home in Quebec where 31 people have died. It looks like staff left and most died from NEGLECT, only 5 from Covid19.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


There are inspections. They should do more.
I'd expect they would have the authority to do surprise inspections.
I know that surprise inspections can be done for Child care facilities under that act, and any workplace can be inspected at any time.

For long term care, the reports are published.





Long-term care in Ontario


Learn about long-term care homes in Ontario and get help applying.




www.health.gov.on.ca





Here is our friendly local home.




__





Home Report






publicreporting.ltchomes.net





The public reports are clearly sanitized, but I think this is at least a reasonable attempt at transparency.


The problems are rather complex, and I don't see an easy solution.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Longtimeago said:


> Now we are hearing about a seniors home in Quebec where 31 people have died. It looks like staff left and most died from NEGLECT, only 5 from Covid19.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Jeez.......did you hear the report from one of the nurses who went into the home after the government became involved ? It was horrific in there.

All the staff had left and there were only 2 people looking after 60 residents. It isn't like we didn't know there was a problem with nursing homes though.

The nurse in Woodstock who murdered residents was fired or disciplined multiple times and she still got jobs because they were desperate for nurses.

There have been countless inquiries and recommendations, but nothing changed.

The police in Quebec are investigating every privately operated home. Some people are going to end up charged with manslaughter or worse.

Nursing homes are at the bottom of the healthcare pay scale. Nurses and PSWs don't want to work there and many jobs are low paid and part time.

It is privatized for profit homes that appear to have all the problems. Publicly funded homes are unionized and better run.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> Jeez.......did you hear the report from one of the nurses who went into the home after the government became involved ? It was horrific in there.
> 
> All the staff had left and there were only 2 people looking after 60 residents. It isn't like we didn't know there was a problem with nursing homes though.
> 
> ...


Please cite your source that Publicly funded homes are better run. Or is this another made up stat like your "3 day food supply chain"?
Here in London we have a well known home (Dearness Home) that has been very problematic.



I wouldn't be surprised if they were unionized, most unions are in government, because only governments can "afford" them.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

There are lots of studies and articles on public versus private long term care homes.

The Dearness home is owned by the city and it unionized. It appears from the link you provided they are inspected almost daily.

Unionized work forces have a method of lodging complaints through their union representatives that non union workers don't have.

Here is one article on the differences between public and for profit homes. You can research the studies if you want.









Opinion: For-profit care of seniors proven to be inferior


Vancouver Coastal Health recently announced it will close two publicly owned and operated residential care facilities in Sechelt. The creation of 600 new beds…




vancouversun.com


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> There are lots of studies and articles on public versus private long term care homes.
> 
> The Dearness home is owned by the city and it unionized. It appears from the link you provided they are inspected almost daily.
> 
> ...


There are so many studies, yet you decided to reference an opinion piece. 

The reality is that care homes are regulated and inspected. In case you're not familiar, anyone in Ontario can make a complaint about their workplace, they will send an inspector, and retribution is illegal and aggressively pursued.

Having worked in union and non union workplaces, I find that union workplaces seem to have a strong sense of entitlement, they have more bullying, they're less team oriented, and they often oppose measures that could make them more productive. I've actually seen union memos with hints how the members can drive up the cost of doing business. 
I've had a few jobs, and I've always found the non union workplaces nicer, more respectful, more team oriented, and to have more opportunities for advancement.

Also there is that think that mandatory unions are clearly a violation of our right to freedom of association.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Why does every thread have to go off topic onto something else?

Forget unions. The whole point is that our senior homes are failing to provide the care needed during this pandemic. ALL the reasons for that are being highlighted in both public and private homes. 

As I see it, the basic problem is that senior care is NOT seen as an integral part of our overall Provincial healthcare systems. Our healthcare system that we all pay into Provincially, provides care from birth for everyone but when it comes to the specific needs of seniors, it gets separated to seniors homes whether public or private.

Just as we have hospitals for everyone, why do hospitals not have say a seniors wing where those needing care can be taken care of on a long term basis, right up to end of life care. Why do we not have public housing designed specifically for seniors who are still capable of independent living but want to do so in a community environment of other seniors.

Why do those who work in any kind of seniors homes not get paid as well as any other healthcare worker in a doctor's practice or a hospital, etc. Why do they not have to be as qualified. Double the qualifications and double the salary. Then they would not have to work 2 jobs to make ends meet. That's why you hear about them working in more than 1 place, they need to in order to earn enough money.

The entire system of how we house and care for seniors needs to be changed drastically. This virus has shown us just how much that needs to happen.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Why does every thread have to go off topic onto something else?
> 
> Forget unions. The whole point is that our senior homes are failing to provide the care needed during this pandemic. ALL the reasons for that are being highlighted in both public and private homes.
> 
> ...


Senior care homes don't provide the level of care, because we can't afford the level of care they need.
People simply aren't saving enough, actually if the COVID crisis tells us anything, people aren't saving AT ALL.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Just as we have hospitals for everyone, why do hospitals not have say a seniors wing where those needing care can be taken care of on a long term basis, right up to end of life care. Why do we not have public housing designed specifically for seniors who are still capable of independent living but want to do so in a community environment of other seniors.


I have been heavily researching senior care in my province for just almost three years now when my mom had her first stroke. It sounds like my province (AB) is different than (ON), but there are some similarities. Also I live in a larger city, so there may be some more differences. I do recall reading information from other provinces when doing my research. 

There are 4 levels of health care assessment my province. 
Level 1 is totally independent. No different in terms of living when one isn't a senior. This is totally independent living. No real support
Level 2 is some supports available. People are able to live at home but may need some help with activities. They can send in home care on a schedule basis to help with medication, treatments, bathing, etc which is publicly funded.
Level 3 - in an assisted living home where they need supportive living but need 24 hour support.
Level 4 - Long term care for complex medical.

Those are all the things funded in my province. We have lots of retirement homes that have a seniors community where the residents are generally independent, but need some level of assistance which is like a 2.5 There is a private portion that is paid for by the senior, as they are choosing to live in the community, and then there is a public funded portion that covers the medical assistance that would have been covered otherwise by the health services. These homes are run privately, but must meet the government regulations to get their subsidies. 

Are you saying they should also get the housing part funded simply because they are seniors? To me that is a lifestyle choice. If they need medical/health assistance sure, if not then why should the tax payers pay for that. We would not be able to keep up with demand. I just wanted clarification as I may be misunderstand what you meant by publicly funded homes to seniors.



> Why do those who work in any kind of seniors homes not get paid as well as any other healthcare worker in a doctor's practice or a hospital, etc. Why do they not have to be as qualified. Double the qualifications and double the salary. Then they would not have to work 2 jobs to make ends meet. That's why you hear about them working in more than 1 place, they need to in order to earn enough money.


Again, in my province, the workers getting paid less are bringing a different skill set. For example, the RN at my mom's home gets paid on the same scale as the RN in the hospital. However, there is also the LPN, NA, and one lower, that get paid less. the NA gets paid the least because they do not require much medical knowledge. That are trained specifically for lifts, changing, feeding etc. Where as the LPN can do all of that, but can also despense the medication and take care of the medical portion such as BP, needles, and some other tests. The over sees them all and has more medical knowledge

The NA's and the one lower (I cannot remember the term) they do a lot more of the manual work and do get bounce around more. My previous nanny is doing this, and we paid for her schooling to keep upgrading so she wouldn't get bounced around. It comes to skill set. Its no different than why does a doctor get paid more than the nurse. 

I am really pleased to see that my mom's home stopped having any staff go between homes weeks before the government mandated it. The reason they were able to do this is the staff there had an additional requirement of certain languages and therefore can get enough hours. 

When I had to go through the medical system for my mom, it's was horrific. I am glad I did it a few years ago than now, because who knows what will come out of this after COVID


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

I do not profess to be a healthcare expert Plugging Along. However, my wife actually is. She ended her career in a position at the national level in the UK. So when she hears about what is happening in our senior residences and is shocked and horrified, I pay attention.

She does not expect there will be no deaths in senior residences, they are after all where a concentration of the most vulnerable congregate and it is inevitable that there will be cases and even small outbreaks in a specific residence. But how high a percentage of all deaths occur in these residences is the real issue. 








Nearly half of Canada’s COVID-19 deaths linked to long-term care facilities: Tam - National | Globalnews.ca


Dr. Tam said the ratio differs among provinces.




globalnews.ca





It should not take a healthcare expert to be able to know that having 50% of all deaths occur in senior residences is simply not an acceptable number. Clearly, even to a layperson like myself, our system is wrong. 

If we take for a limited comparison this statement, "_But David Behan, chairman of home operator HC-One, said cases of the new coronavirus had been reported in 232 of the firm's homes -- two-thirds of the total. He said 311 residents and one staff member have died with confirmed or suspected COVID-19.", _that shows a very different picture. 

For one of the largest seniors home companies that's 312 deaths including only 1 staff member out of a total of 300+ seniors residences. Roughly 1 per residence! I couldn't find any kind of accurate figure for deaths in senior residences for all of the UK but if we take that HC-One as a typical number it certainly does not approach 50% of all deaths.

So why the difference? The UK is actually not doing as well overall as Canada is, they currently have a total of 12,100 deaths compared to Canada's 780. They have roughly twice the population so if they were doing as well as Canada we would expect to see them having twice as many deaths which would get them to 2x780= 1560. At 12,100, they are roughly 7.75 times where they would be if they were doing as well as Canada and yet their percentage of deaths in seniors homes is nowhere near as high a percentage as ours is.

So it isn't that they are doing a better overall job of dealing with the virus, they're doing a much poorer job overall but when it comes to seniors residences they are doing a whole lot better than we are. That HAS to be systemic.









Figures show hundreds of COVID-19 deaths in U.K. care homes


Leading British charities said the new coronavirus is causing "devastation" in the country's nursing homes, as official statistics showed Tuesday that hundreds more people with COVID-19 have died than were recorded in the U.K. government's daily tally.




www.ctvnews.ca


----------



## off.by.10 (Mar 16, 2014)

Longtimeago said:


> It should not take a healthcare expert to be able to know that having 50% of all deaths occur in senior residences is simply not an acceptable number. Clearly, even to a layperson like myself, our system is wrong.


Actually, it clearly does take an expert. And you're making that point extremely well by cherry picking whatever numbers fit your narrative and not even knowing what you don't know. There's a reason statisticians exist. Statistics are *difficult* to do right. I've taken university classes on statistics, frequently do some at work, and that barely makes me aware of half the stuff I could do incorrectly when trying to evaluate that kind of figure to see how "wrong" it is.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

I often say that Canadians don't know how good they have it unless they have gone to live in some other countries and can realistically compare differences. I continue to hold by that, Canadians in general have it better than in most countries of the world.

In terms of healthcare we certainly have it much better than our neighbour to the south and in comparison to the UK, my wife says we have it much better than there as well, in general. But nothing is perfect and can't be improved. What this virus is showing us very clearly is that we do NOT have it better when it comes to care for seniors.

Our politicians are saying all the 'right words' about how we have to protect our most vulnerable first but we are not doing that. Words mean nothing without action. Unfortunately, it is not realistic to expect to be able to change that overnight and so our most vulnerable who are in senior residences are suffering accordingly and will continue to do so until a vaccine is available.

All we can do is look to the future to make MAJOR changes to our system for seniors care. Again in reality, that will be exceedingly difficult to do because like everything else, change is never welcomed, existing systems are entrenched and to change them requires near superhuman effort and a great deal of the WILL to change things. Whether that WILL is going to be there or not when the time comes that we can start to expect to be able to make changes, who knows. My confidence level is not high. 

In regards to specifics, this document shows how the interrelationship between the care home staff and the NHS (UK equivalent, although national, of our Provincial healthcare systems). That relationship does not exist anywhere nearly as much here in Canada as far as I know. Note for example this comment, "_Once care home staff have a suspected case, they should isolate that resident to their room and commence use of the personal protective equipment (PPE) provided by NHS England." _That difference alone probably helps explain why we have had so many private seniors residence staff walking off the job. We have all these individual residences each in charge of buying and supplying their own PPE to staff.


----------



## off.by.10 (Mar 16, 2014)

Longtimeago said:


> Our politicians are saying all the 'right words' about how we have to protect our most vulnerable first but we are not doing that. Words mean nothing without action.


On that I definitely agree. I think what happened over here, but was so far left unsaid, is that they prepared for a lot more cases in hospitals and intensive care than they actually got. It's easy with hindsight to say "but that staff should have gone to senior care homes" (they're doing that now). But should the hospitals have filled up, we might have had "but why are we letting parents die to take care of the grandparents". I suspect there were some hard decisions made behind closed doors that we might never hear about. At least not officially.

Of course, the official line from politicians will always be "we will care for everyone and save everyone we possibly can". Perhaps we will learn more in 20 years when the politicians are into retirement and the current crisis has become history.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

@Longtimeago I am just trying to understand and connect your questions inorder to respond appropriately.

Which one(s) of the following is it? 

1. (How) Should (elder care) change re government vs. private businesses?
2. (Why) senior homes are failing to provide the care needed during this pandemic.
a. Is that senior care is NOT seen as an integral part of our overall Provincial healthcare systems.
b. Why is care provided from birth for everyone but when it comes to the specific needs of seniors, it gets separated to seniors homes whether public or private.
3a. Why do those who work in any kind of seniors homes not get paid as well as any other healthcare worker in a doctor's practice or a hospital, etc. 
b. Why do they not have to be as qualified. Double the qualifications and double the salary
4a. Why is the percentage of deaths in senior homes so much higher.
b. Why is it so different in the UK
Each question is related but has its own separate set of considerations. 
1. I already put in my information in a previous post.

2. In our city, the major of the deaths are in one home, it's because they didn't catch it in time, put in the protocols, and it spread too quickly. This would happen with an communal group of high risk people. A seniors home is a perfect storm of this. Everyone in there is high risk, they have visitors who cannot be tracked, there are common rooms and activities, it's more difficult to social distance, they are an essential service so a complete lock down is impossible, you need food delivery, medical doctors and nurse, these supplies, cleaners, etc. Because it is a home and not a medical facility, its not built to be sterile like hospitals because they are not hospitals. Staff are going between homes. Like I said, it's the perfect place for an outbreak with a lot of death. 

I have thought long and hard about this as my mom lives in this environment and we are concerned. Fortunately, for my moms home, they didn't wait for government orders and locked out visitors early on. The staff started wearing masks earlier, group activities were limited, though they eat in a common area, there is much less interaction, the important on is staff have not bee allowed to work in other facilities, there is a delivery area where everything is disinfected, and non residents are allowed on that floor. So they have been keeping people safe. 

However, it comes at the expense of mental health for some. My mother has dementia and some other mental health challenges, change in routine severely affect her. My father used to visit every day. With him not being allowed, she has extreme anxiety and paranoia. She sometimes will refuse her meds and have panic attacks, refuse to eat and cry uncontrollable. We have managed to arrange for phone calls if the nurses aren't busy which calms her, but they happen once a week and when she is inconsolable. We understand why the measures need to be taken as they have managed to keep the home safe. We believe this will accelerate the deterioration of my mothers mental condition and just hope she will be able to function recognize us when we are allowed to visit again. 

2a. Is it an integral part of the health system. We spend more on senior care than other care (normally) Seniors just need so much more.
b. There is a huge difference for birth, you are in the hospital for a couple of days maybe up to 4 or 5 if there is something serious. Senior care is much longer. You just can't have seniors living in hospitals. There isn't enough room, nor are the needs the same. When my mother fell the second time, in order to get her into a care facility faster, we had to leave her in the hospital while she waited. She was there for months and it was AWFUL. The staff are there to keep you alive in the hospital, that is it. They cannot take out for activities, or walks, if you can't do it, you are stuck in your bed. We went three times a day to exercise my mom and hired someone to visit her to do occupational therapy (at our cost), there was no socialization. Trust me, at hospital is the last place you want to be if you are a senior and don't need it. 
The last time my mother went into the hospital, we found out she had an untreatable to condition with maybe a few days to live. They were kind and gave us a private room so we could spend her last days with her. Then after week she was still alive, they asked us which hospice we wanted for her end of life because after two weeks they would need the bed. We begged to let her finish her life at her home under compassion care. She is still alive after a year. Her condition has a 99.999% fatality at 12 months. My point is hospitals can't take someone for year where there need a different care.

3a & b Already answered previously.

4. There are many reason why the death rates could be different. It could be that the UK has more death outside, and aren't doing a good job containing the deaths outside of homes. In Canada, even everything province is different. In my city there are 2 (might be 3) seniors homes that are infected. That's where the majority of the deaths are. However, our death rate is a little lower. Those two homes didn't catch it in time, and it was early on. It too difficult to compare different countries.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

off.by.10 said:


> Actually, it clearly does take an expert. And you're making that point extremely well by cherry picking whatever numbers fit your narrative and not even knowing what you don't know. There's a reason statisticians exist. Statistics are *difficult* to do right. I've taken university classes on statistics, frequently do some at work, and that barely makes me aware of half the stuff I could do incorrectly when trying to evaluate that kind of figure to see how "wrong" it is.


My wife IS an expert off.by.10. Are you? She can tell me in far more detail than I even care to know, just how each procedure is handled or should be in a given situation and for maximum effectiveness. Do you want me to have her come on her and write a 500 page explanation for you? Not about the statistics, that's easy to do. But about just what it actually takes to put an 'iron ring' as Ford refers to it, around a seniors residence and what has to go on inside that iron ring by the staff of the residence. What qualifications and skill sets are needed by each category of staff in that residence. How many there need to be per capita of each and what access to outside healthcare for what purposes there need to be, etc. etc. 

Do you think that your classes on statistics qualify you to disagree with a healthcare professional who at a national level was responsible for changing their cancer care system nationally? Changing how the system worked across an entire country from the first presentation of a patient to the GP to final outcome. Changed the entire system. She would in fact be qualified to lead an entire change to Canada's senior healthcare. 

How much more expert do you want off.by.10? When my wife tells me this pandemic is showing our system for seniors SUCKS (my word, not hers), I listen to her and if you have any seniors in your family I suggest you may also want to listen to what she is telling me.


----------



## off.by.10 (Mar 16, 2014)

Longtimeago said:


> My wife IS an expert off.by.10. Are you? She can tell me in far more detail than I even care to know, just how each procedure is handled or should be in a given situation and for maximum effectiveness. Do you want me to have her come on her and write a 500 page explanation for you? Not about the statistics, that's easy to do.


I was not responding to your wife's opinion of our care system (I can trust her on that, yes) but rather to your assertion that the % of deaths in care homes is "obviously wrong". I don't claim to be an expert on statistics. But yes, I will claim to know enough to be able to say that it's not as easy as you seem to think it is. And no, your wife's qualifications do not apply to handling statistics just because the statistics are related to something she does know about. Just like eg. being a F1 pilot would not make you qualified to deal with statistics about car accidents, even though it would likely make you extremely qualified to avoid causing them.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

The nursing homes in Ontario do not announce statistics daily. They are coming out with big numbers of infections and deaths all at once.

I have no doubt that many of the COVID deaths are in nursing homes. Many deaths that were likely COVID related were falsely recorded as other causes.

When the whole truth is known, it will horrify people. The conditions are beyond comprehension.

Staff members have quit and the residents are abandoned, because the homes couldn't find replacement workers.

The remaining few employees are doing the best they can, but 2 people cannot bathe, dress, feed, and look after 60 residents no matter how hard they try.

There will be some who try to blame the remaining workers. Many will blame anyone but themselves.

The truth is that we as a society put low priority on seniors in nursing homes, and now we are shocked and embarrassed by how it is turning out.

There have been numerous inquiries, media investigations, union advocates, family members.........all warning of the same things.

We can't claim we didn't know or weren't told, because we did know and we were told.

There is nobody to blame but ourselves for letting it happen. This is my fault. It is your fault. It is our fault.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Wrong thread.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Plugging Along, I do not have the answers as to what the problems are or what the solutions are. Nor would my wife say she could tell you today based on her knowledge of our systems and also bearing in mind that since our healthcare is provincial, it will differ for each.

The only thing I do feel confident in saying is that we are seeing clearly that our existing system is failing our seniors in this current situation and so should be changed so that it cannot happen again. To do that will take looking at the entire system and finding where each change needs to be made.

You seem to be asking me to identify what I see as the specific problems and specific solutions and I can't do that. I can only say what I as a layperson and also based on my wife's comments, seem to be some of the more obvious issues. So, equipment not centrally supplied for example and individual senior's residences not having enough or access to enough. Or staff having to work in more than one home because they are kept to part-time workers to avoid paying benefits. Or connections between seniors residences and other healthcare professionals not being well integrated. There are no doubt numerous places in our systems that could be improved. Some are fairly easy to identify and others will not be. Then there is what will it take to actually change them.

As an example, my wife was 'plucked' out of a hospital to lead change to the entire cancer care system, that was because she was responsible for changing the time between a patient first visiting their GP to the time when they were given their diagnosis, from 3-4 weeks to under 7 days. You can imagine what that meant to someone waiting to hear whether they have a malignant tumour or not. The anxiety for anyone then is through the roof.

She did that for one hospital and then spent 3 years trying to affect that change and others to the entire system. She was successful most of the time but not all of the time. Reluctance to change is a major challenge in anything. She would have doctors saying to her, 'that might work in X but it won't work here.' Bear in mind that she had a great deal of training and experience as a 'Change Manager' in healthcare and qualifications 'coming out the wazoo' as they say. A combination of medical skills/qualifications, business skills/qualifications and people skills/qualifications. 

If she can't tell me what changes need to be made, you and I are sure not going to be able to figure it all out here.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Regarding long term seniors care in hospitals, actually we do have such facilities Plugging Along. Your 2b point.

"_b. There is a huge difference for birth, you are in the hospital for a couple of days maybe up to 4 or 5 if there is something serious. Senior care is much longer. You just can't have seniors living in hospitals. There isn't enough room, nor are the needs the same. When my mother fell the second time, in order to get her into a care facility faster, we had to leave her in the hospital while she waited. She was there for months and it was AWFUL. The staff are there to keep you alive in the hospital, that is it. They cannot take out for activities, or walks, if you can't do it, you are stuck in your bed. We went three times a day to exercise my mom and hired someone to visit her to do occupational therapy (at our cost), there was no socialization. Trust me, at hospital is the last place you want to be if you are a senior and don't need it."_

We do in fact do it in Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto for example, for our war veterans. Veterans Program - Canada's largest war veterans' care facility

Take a look at their handbook here: https://sunnybrook.ca/uploads/1/programs/veterans/sunnybrook-veterans-handbook-141103.pdf

Take a look at their Covid 19 pages here: COVID-19 (Coronavirus) - Information, Resources & Frequently Asked Questions

Your comments re 'we can't do it in hospitals' though does show just how entrenched our thinking can be and how easily we dismiss a new idea. 'We've always done it this way' and 'it won't work here' are the two phrases my wife heard most often.


----------



## Spudd (Oct 11, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> I do not profess to be a healthcare expert Plugging Along. However, my wife actually is. She ended her career in a position at the national level in the UK. So when she hears about what is happening in our senior residences and is shocked and horrified, I pay attention.
> 
> It should not take a healthcare expert to be able to know that having 50% of all deaths occur in senior residences is simply not an acceptable number. Clearly, even to a layperson like myself, our system is wrong.
> 
> So it isn't that they are doing a better overall job of dealing with the virus, they're doing a much poorer job overall but when it comes to seniors residences they are doing a whole lot better than we are. That HAS to be systemic.


According to this article today from Global, the UK has had 5979 CV deaths in nursing homes, and 11329 overall - which comes to 52% of deaths being in nursing homes. About the same as us.


----------



## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

Spudd said:


> According to this article today from Global, the UK has had 5979 CV deaths in nursing homes, and 11329 overall - which comes to 52% of deaths being in nursing homes. About the same as us.


It's surprising in this day and age that true numbers aren't used. 

From that article ...
_The higher figure, published weekly by the statistics office, includes deaths in all settings including nursing homes, and cases *where coronavirus was suspected but not tested for*._


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

sags said:


> ... Nursing homes are at the bottom of the healthcare pay scale. Nurses and PSWs don't want to work there and many jobs are low paid and part time ...


In my area of Ontario, the low par and lots of part time positions are the private retirement homes.

I'm not sure how a nurse is a nursing home compares to a hospital in terms of pay but I've heard a lot prefer the nursing home as the pay/staffing levels are better/more reliable.


Cheers


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Spudd said:


> According to this article today from Global, the UK has had 5979 CV deaths in nursing homes, and 11329 overall - which comes to 52% of deaths being in nursing homes. About the same as us.


Umm, no Spudd you are misreading the article which is the same article I linked here earlier by the way.

The sentence you are misreading is this one, "The Office for National Statistics said 5,979 deaths that occurred in England up to April 3 involved COVID-19," That is ALL Covid19 deaths in ALL of England in ALL settings. ie. hospital, nursing home, at home.

Read it again for yourself if you like.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Eclectic12 said:


> In my area of Ontario, the low par and lots of part time positions are the private retirement homes.
> 
> I'm not sure how a nurse is a nursing home compares to a hospital in terms of pay but I've heard a lot prefer the nursing home as the pay/staffing levels are better/more reliable.
> 
> ...


It is obvious that one of the failings in our system is the use of part time workers who move from one home to another. That's why Ford has now put a stop to that in Ontario.

What is also obvious is why private companies use part time workers. If you hire 2 part timers at 4 hours each you do not have to pay the benefits, etc. that you would have to pay 1 full time worker for 8 hours per day. No sick days/pay for example. Vacation days, public holidays paid, paid lunch hour, etc. Part time workers are also not generally paid as much as full time workers, per hour.

Many businesses these days use this same model for hiring workers as it is CHEAPER. But it certainly isn't the best model to use in this current situation if you want to reduce spread of the virus in a senior's residence. So it should never have been allowed in the first place.

That brings us to why has it been allowed and that is down to our not having a Federal mandated system that all residences in Canada have to adhere to. Even a Provincially mandated requirement would work if ALL Provinces followed a set of 'guidelines' laid out at the Federal level. Instead we have each Province doing their own thing in regards to all factors involved in operating a seniors residence.

Ontario has failed miserably in their inspections as well. So even if a requirement is in place, they haven't been checking enough to see if the requirements are being met. Read here:


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/seniors-homes-inspections-1.5532585



All the deficiencies of how residences are run have been known for DECADES but have been allowed to continue. Even when inspections are done, there is still the question of are the criteria that are supposed to be adhered to actually adequate or not. For example, if there is no criteria that says only full time staff can be used, then having part timers will not and CANNOT be stopped from happening.


----------



## Spudd (Oct 11, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Umm, no Spudd you are misreading the article which is the same article I linked here earlier by the way.
> 
> The sentence you are misreading is this one, "The Office for National Statistics said 5,979 deaths that occurred in England up to April 3 involved COVID-19," That is ALL Covid19 deaths in ALL of England in ALL settings. ie. hospital, nursing home, at home.
> 
> Read it again for yourself if you like.


You're right - my mistake.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

I am not trying to suggest that senior care in the UK is perfect by any means, nothing ever is. But we can see a distinct difference and it isn't hard to see what some of the differences are and what affect they have. 

Our system needs an entire 'redesign' from the ground up with no preconceived 'this is how we have always done it' allowed to begin with. We need to stop treating seniors as second class citizens when it comes to healthcare.


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

Longtimeago said:


> It is obvious that one of the failings in our system is the use of part time workers who move from one home to another. That's why Ford has now put a stop to that in Ontario ...


While likely the bulk of those working at multiple homes are part timers ... there are full timers who do the same in my area. They will finish their shift at home A and tell their co-workers about how they are headed to home B for the next shift.



Longtimeago said:


> ... What is also obvious is why private companies use part time workers ...


There is that ... there's also the provincially funded nursing homes that use part timers. There are those assigned to arrange replacements for those who called in sick or simply didn't show up. Some call an agency first because there's no chance of being turned down and having to spend time working multiple phone calls to find a willing replacement.




Longtimeago said:


> ... But it certainly isn't the best model to use in this current situation if you want to reduce spread of the virus in a senior's residence. So it should never have been allowed in the first place ...


From what I heard, a fair number of the part time staff that picked the nursing home my friend works at have been bumped up to full time hours to get the shifts covered.

There have been many who were classed as part time who worked full time hours for five, six years before a full time position became available.




Longtimeago said:


> ... That brings us to why has it been allowed and that is down to our not having a Federal mandated system that all residences in Canada have to adhere to. Even a Provincially mandated requirement would work if ALL Provinces followed a set of 'guidelines' laid out at the Federal level ... Ontario has failed miserably in their inspections as well. So even if a requirement is in place, they haven't been checking enough to see if the requirements are being met ....


Federal or provincial mandate ... if the inspections or enforcement aren't adequate - it won't matter. Even if inspections/enforcement are good - if there aren't bodies willing to do the job, it won't matter either.


Cheers


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

_Even if inspections/enforcement are good - if there aren't bodies willing to do the job, it won't matter either._

I am not sure more hours or pay would make a difference either. It is the kind of work that many people don't want to do.


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

For some ... in other cases, what drives my friend nuts is her co-workers who are in it for the pay cheque. The less they can do is for them, a good thing. She wants to take care of people so she's constantly pointing out where corners were cut that affect the health of the residents.

She is on the dementia floor, which a lot of her co-workers do their best to avoid being assigned to.


Cheers


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

How many people would apply for a job on a dementia ward if the job description was the reality .....expect to be swore at, kicked, punched, spit at, and have people expose themselves to you on a daily basis?

That in addition to cleaning up the patients "messes", "accidents", or whatever nice words are used to describe it.

Anyone wanting to give it a try.........now is your big chance. There are bedpans waiting for you.

People have done these jobs because it was all that was available. As other jobs become available they have other choices for employment.

Maybe society will change and families will have to take care of their own elderly family members......go back to the future.


----------



## twa2w (Mar 5, 2016)

Spudd said:


> You're right - my mistake.


But there is this line in the article

'As of Monday, the government had reported 11,329 deaths in the U.K. of people with the new coronavirus.'

Earlier they quote the 5,xxx figures as being hospitals only and that the higher figure includes all deaths- no clear indication of breakdown for nursing homes vs at home or other places. 

So I think the whole article is poorly worded and unclear. If a person is moved from a nursing home to a hospital and dies in the hospital, does this count as a hospital death or a nursing home death?


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Eclectic12 said:


> For some ... in other cases, what drives my friend nuts is her co-workers who are in it for the pay cheque. The less they can do is for them, a good thing. She wants to take care of people so she's constantly pointing out where corners were cut that affect the health of the residents.
> 
> She is on the dementia floor, which a lot of her co-workers do their best to avoid being assigned to.
> 
> ...


The answer to that to a degree at least Eclectic12 is to require qualifications that are not easy to get. Instead of having many workers with minimal qualifications, turn the jobs into a profession with qualifications that take time and effort to get. Those in it just for a pay cheque will simply not be willing to go through that process.

If you think about RNs, not all are there because they truly want to care for the sick. They aren't all Mother Theresas. But most did at least start out with a real desire to care for people and yes, at the same time saw it as a profession that paid pretty well. But I doubt that anyone just looking for a pay cheque would start on the path to becoming an RN.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

sags said:


> How many people would apply for a job on a dementia ward if the job description was the reality .....expect to be swore at, kicked, punched, spit at, and have people expose themselves to you on a daily basis?
> 
> That in addition to cleaning up the patients "messes", "accidents", or whatever nice words are used to describe it.
> 
> ...


Not many just looking for a pay cheque would apply sags. The problem is that many of those doing the job are just in it for the money as Eclectic12 suggests.

If it required specific dementia related skills and qualifications to be ALLOWED to work on a dementia ward, those doing it would be doing it because they CHOSE to work with dementia patients. Instead of minimal qualifications to clean bedpans, try staffing dementia wards with no less than fully qualified Psychiatric Nurses (RPN) and pay them what they are worth. But what private seniors residence wants to pay for full time Psychiatric Nurses if they don't have to. That's why we need regulations that FORCE them to have the best staff possible. 

An RN or RPN earns around $35 an hour. Having to have a Nurse Practioner (NP) on staff rather than just an RN as the top level in a residence will cost around $88k per year. Needing 3 on staff for 24 hour coverage, $264k per year. Why should the level of staff required to be on site be any different than you would expect to find in a hospital?

This is the issue, we do not treat the elderly the same way as we do everyone else when it comes to their healthcare. We treat them like second class citizens.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

twa2w said:


> But there is this line in the article
> 
> 'As of Monday, the government had reported 11,329 deaths in the U.K. of people with the new coronavirus.'
> 
> ...


There is a different of around 800 deaths between the two numbers reported twa2w with National Statistics reporting a higher number than the NHS. That difference is because the NHS only reports hospital deaths. So they miss nursing home and at home deaths.

So take the 800 difference and IF you even attribute all of those to nursing homes you can then look at the percentage of the overall deaths and say as the article does, it is a difference of 15%. That is a long way from our reported 50% deaths in nursing homes.

The point is that while it is inevitable that you will have some deaths in nursing homes, it is not inevitable that you will have 50% as we are having. It is clear that our system sucks.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> There is a different of around 800 deaths between the two numbers reported twa2w with National Statistics reporting a higher number than the NHS. That difference is because the NHS only reports hospital deaths. So they miss nursing home and at home deaths.
> 
> So take the 800 difference and IF you even attribute all of those to nursing homes you can then look at the percentage of the overall deaths and say as the article does, it is a difference of 15%. That is a long way from our reported 50% deaths in nursing homes.
> 
> The point is that while it is inevitable that you will have some deaths in nursing homes, it is not inevitable that you will have 50% as we are having. It is clear that our system sucks.


It MAY be that our system sucks of seniors OR it MAY be the the UK system sucks for all. As of today, UK has just under 14K deaths, 15% of seniors would be about 2000 seniors

Canada has about 1.2k deaths TOTAL, even at 50%, that's about a 600 seniors. 

This MAY indicate that Canada sucks, but if you look at other numbers
UK deaths 202/million overall and ~30/million for seniors
Canada deaths 32 /million and ~16/million for seniors.

Looking at the later metrics, I would rather be in Canada for healthcare than the UK for COVID. I would still rather my senior parents to be in the health care in Canada than the UK, they were have a higher probability of dying there. 

The UK has a higher chance of getting infected right now, a higher chance dying if you do get infected overall, so more seniors will dye with everyone else.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

The CBC is reporting the Ford government scaled back regular inspections of nursing homes in 2018 and virtually eliminated them in 2019.

One significant purpose of the inspections was to monitor infection control practices and protocols in the nursing homes.



https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/seniors-homes-inspections-1.5532585


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

The Ford government were also questioned at the news conference if workers were still moving between homes, and Ford admitted they were.

People are demanding answers and leadership and Ford is not providing either right now. He did start off pretty well but hasn't looked good lately.

The ongoing nursing home tragedy is a huge issue in Ontario. Everybody is talking about it and many are very angry.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> The Ford government were also questioned at the news conference if workers were still moving between homes, and Ford admitted they were.
> 
> People are demanding answers and leadership and Ford is not providing either right now. He did start off pretty well but hasn't looked good lately.
> 
> The ongoing nursing home tragedy is a huge issue in Ontario. Everybody is talking about it and many are very angry.


Yes they are, and I believe she even explained why. The homes are short staffed, and they have part timers who work 2 part time jobs.
If they simply ruled they can't do that, they'd have an acute worker shortage immediately. So they gave them a short period to try and figure it out.

You noted earlier that some homes "appear to be inspected continuously".
So what is it? Too many inspections or not enough inspections?


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Plugging Along said:


> It MAY be that our system sucks of seniors OR it MAY be the the UK system sucks for all. As of today, UK has just under 14K deaths, 15% of seniors would be about 2000 seniors
> 
> Canada has about 1.2k deaths TOTAL, even at 50%, that's about a 600 seniors.
> 
> ...


Umm, interesting math Plugging Along. However your logic isn't up to scratch at all.

If the UK has 15% of seniors dying and we want to compare that to what 15% of Canadian seniors dying would be, then you take Canada's 1.2k total deaths and figure out what 15% of THAT number would be. It would be around 180. But instead it is around 600. 

You don't look at the UK's total deaths, take 15% of that to arrive at 2000 seniors deaths and compare that to Canada's 600 seniors deaths and say, 'oh look, more are dying in the UK'. It's the PERCENTAGE of deaths that are seniors that you compare.

So it is simple. The UK is getting 15% deaths of seniors and Canada is getting 50%. End of story.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

MrMatt said:


> Yes they are, and I believe she even explained why. The homes are short staffed, and they have part timers who work 2 part time jobs.
> If they simply ruled they can't do that, they'd have an acute worker shortage immediately. So they gave them a short period to try and figure it out.
> 
> You noted earlier that some homes "appear to be inspected continuously".
> So what is it? Too many inspections or not enough inspections?


I am in agreement with sags on this one. Ford is not looking very good right now in his responses re the seniors residences. They only did 9 inspections in all of 2019 and that was on Fords' watch, so he has to take the responsibility for that. But that is for future consideration by the voters. Right now, he needs to make some quick decisions to deal with the situation as it IS and that doesn't seem to be happening quickly enough.

Instead what I see in his briefings on the last couple of days is avoiding admitting they screwed up for the last few years re inspections and avoiding taking responsibility for that. I see a lot of repeats of trite phrases like, our first priority is our most vulnerable' but little actual action being taken. 

Ford did not create this entire problem on his own. Senior care has been a well known issue for decades. No one government is responsible for what we now see as a result, every government for decades shares responsibility. So I am not putting it all on Ford, what's done is done. But right now what I am putting entirely on Ford is finding a response right NOW to deal with what is as best we can. 

At the federal level, other than offering financial assistance, there is little that can be done since it is the Provinces who are in control of our healthcare systems.


----------



## off.by.10 (Mar 16, 2014)

Longtimeago said:


> Umm, interesting math Plugging Along. However your logic isn't up to scratch at all.


His logic is better than yours. You can either try to learn or double down on ignorance. Your choice.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Unionized nursing homes have more inspections because they have health and safety committees who deal with the company and Ministry.

The employees don't have to fear retribution from the employer. The unions also track violations in the nursing homes and make sure they are addressed.

There is nobody who can keep watch on the nursing homes better than the people who work there.

Unionized work places almost always have higher wages and benefits and it gives the homes more ability to hire qualified employees.

The only reason to deny unionization in nursing homes is to retain low wages and to avoid having to address problems. Profit is the motivation.

All nursing homes should be unionized, incorporated into one large national union that cannot be ignored by politicians.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

off.by.10 said:


> His logic is better than yours. You can either try to learn or double down on ignorance. Your choice.


Oh really off.by.10. Rather than making inane remarks with no substance, go ahead and try to show us your math that indicates 15% is not better than 50%.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Everything I have read in the media says that over 50% of all COVID deaths in Ontario are in nursing homes.

That number is climbing each day as so many homes are infected.


----------



## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

Longtimeago said:


> You don't look at the UK's total deaths, take 15% of that to arrive at 2000 seniors deaths and compare that to Canada's 600 seniors deaths and say, 'oh look, more are dying in the UK'. It's the PERCENTAGE of deaths that are seniors that you compare.
> 
> So it is simple. The UK is getting 15% deaths of seniors and Canada is getting 50%. End of story.


That's one way to look at it however one needs to compare overall infection rates (per capita) and then percentage of seniors. You could also factor in the age group distribution with in each country to get a better picture. The also disregards the fact of when the virus started it's spread in each country but there are also many other factors to consider so we'll just leave those out. 

Let's compare the UK and a fictional UK2 country, both with the same population but UK2 went on extreme lock down before the virus was spread there, just for example.

UK infected = 98480, deaths = 12868, say 1930 senior deaths (15% used from above).
UK2 infected = 80, deaths = 60, say 50 senior deaths.

So which country would you rather be in? Still think PERCENTAGE of senior deaths matters most?


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

cainvest said:


> That's one way to look at it however one needs to compare overall infection rates (per capita) and then percentage of seniors. You could also factor in the age group distribution with in each country to get a better picture. The also disregards the fact of when the virus started it's spread in each country but there are also many other factors to consider so we'll just leave those out.
> 
> Let's compare the UK and a fictional UK2 country, both with the same population but UK2 went on extreme lock down before the virus was spread there, just for example.
> 
> ...


Well you can use fictional countries and numbers if you wish cainvest but we are not dealing with fiction, we are dealing with real life. Your fictional country is therefore irrelevant.

So the question is not whether it would be better to live in your fictional UK2 which I will grant you would be better, but whether it is better to be in the UK or Canada in REAL life. The answer to that is the 15% vs. 50% which are REAL percentages of deaths.

Nice try though cainvest. I haven't checked every country and am not saying the UK is the best, there may be a country that has done even better in isolating their seniors from the virus. The point is that Canada has NOT done a good job at all.


----------



## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

Longtimeago said:


> Well you can use fictional countries and numbers if you wish cainvest but we are not dealing with fiction, we are dealing with real life. Your fictional country is therefore irrelevant.


You may think it is not relevant but the example clearly shows that your "It's the PERCENTAGE of deaths that are seniors that you compare." is not the "End of story" comparison you claim it to be.

In other words, if one country does a much better job controlling the total number of infected it is likely to do better overall regardless of percentages. Total deaths per capita, amoung other things, do factor in here.


----------



## off.by.10 (Mar 16, 2014)

Longtimeago said:


> Oh really off.by.10. Rather than making inane remarks with no substance, go ahead and try to show us your math that indicates 15% is not better than 50%.


Plugging Along already did. So did cainvest. And you discarded all of it without bothering trying to understand it because it does not fit the conclusion you've already decided must be the one and only truth. I won't waste effort writing the same thing again when it's obvious that you're unwilling to consider being wrong. Your pretense of logic has as many holes as swiss cheese and there's no fixing it until you accept your ignorance and start reading with an open mind. You can rant all day long if you want, it won't change the facts and it won't make everyone else wrong.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Umm, interesting math Plugging Along. However your logic isn't up to scratch at all.


My math and logic are correct. I cannot tell if it's your comprehension, reading ability, or inability to look at the over numbers. You managed to cherry pick just the numbers you wanted without an overall picture to compare apples to apples. 



Longtimeago said:


> Oh really off.by.10. Rather than making inane remarks with no substance, go ahead and try to show us your math that indicates 15% is not better than 50%.


So to make in simple enough for your, I have my grade 5 child helping with explaining the math equation as I believe grade if she could explain and understand it, you should too. I appreciate the opportunity to show my child why critical thinking and math are so important. I had her take the time to walk through what you did right and where there were fallacies in your logic. 



> If the UK has 15% of seniors dying and we want to compare that to what 15% of Canadian seniors dying would be, then you take Canada's 1.2k total deaths and figure out what 15% of THAT number would be. It would be around 180. But instead it is around 600.
> 
> You don't look at the UK's total deaths, take 15% of that to arrive at 2000 seniors deaths and compare that to Canada's 600 seniors deaths and say, 'oh look, more are dying in the UK'. It's the PERCENTAGE of deaths that are seniors that you compare.


She says that this part is correct and that is where your comment stops being correct.



> So it is simple. The UK is getting 15% deaths of seniors and Canada is getting 50%. End of story.


She did agree that this was simple for her, but then thought it might not be for you as you got the calculation wrong. She says it's okay, a lot of the kids in her class wouldn't have gotten this. 
Here's her explanation of why the logic is incorrect. 
The numbers you presented are 15% UK Seniors and 50% Canada Seniors dying *OF THOSE WHO GET SICK.* 
Presenting these percentages without the 'Of those who get sick' is misleading. The two denominators are wrong (she want the internet community to know that the denominators is the number you have to divide by bottom). The reason is wrong is they present a view to mislead. 

To determine if over all more seniors are dying as a percentage of all cases not just the ones getting sick.
The equation is the number of people who dye, and the percentage of the those who dye are senior and the MOST IMPORTANT NUMBER according to my 11 year old to do a comparison is the LOWEST COMMON MULTIPLETOR (LCM) as she says to compare apples to apples. Accordingly worldmetrics and few other sites, here's the numbers.

UK deaths 202 /million people 
Canada deaths 32 /million people. 

My child wanted to identify the million people was the LCD. She was very pleased that I didn't make her calculate it herself. So she thought this was simple (also note, I provided that in my post). She did reluctantly explain how to find the LCM if this wasn't published, but I didn't want to type it.

Using the rates that you prescribed of 15% UK and 50% Canada to compare if it was a better or worse for seniors in Canada, she calculated

Senior UK deaths OVERALL ~30 / million people OR 0.003%
Senior Canada death OVERALL 16 / million people 0.0016%

She did say I may have confused people by bringing the 2000 and 600. So I should have not brought that up.
The final step she must do in solving math problems is summarize the information.

In the UK, 30 seniors out of every million people will probably die from COVID or this is 0.003% of the population. In Canada, 16 seniors out of every million people will probably die from COVID or this is 0.0016% of the population. 0.003% is greater than 0.0016% therefore more seniors will die in the UK.

Not part of the math problem, but I did ask to explain why 50% death is not worst that 15%. 

Her explanation was more people in the UK are dying at getting COVID. So overall in the UK you will more likely dye than in Canada. However, if you are a senior that gets COVID in Canada, you are more likely to be a 'goner'. But Canada is doing a better job of having people not get it. She is glad that her grandparents live in Canada. 

This the math explained by my 11 year old. My 14 year old agree, and wanted to know why it took so long to explain. She trusted the calculation and said 'well no kidding' It a question of the big fish in the small pond (Canada) or little fish in the big lake (UK) She didn't want to explain something less concrete.

Don't feel bad if your math logic was corrected by a grade schooler, she is nationally ranked in math in in Canada. She will bring this to her math coach next week to see if the rest of the class gets it.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

off.by.10 said:


> Plugging Along already did. So did cainvest. And you discarded all of it without bothering trying to understand it because it does not fit the conclusion you've already decided must be the one and only truth. I won't waste effort writing the same thing again when it's obvious that you're unwilling to consider being wrong. Your pretense of logic has as many holes as swiss cheese and there's no fixing it until you accept your ignorance and start reading with an open mind. You can rant all day long if you want, it won't change the facts and it won't make everyone else wrong.


LOL, as a debater off.by.10, you are a dismal failure. At least Plugging Along and cainvest are capable of advancing their own rebuttals. You apparently can't come up with one at all.

By the way, only ONE Swiss cheese comes with holes. To say 'as many holes as Swiss (it is capitalized by the way) cheese' is actually a very sloppy and incorrect saying. Switzerland produces many different kinds of cheese of which only Emmentaler cheese has holes.








Why Does Swiss Cheese Have Holes?


An expert explores the science behind this beloved hole-y cheese.




culturecheesemag.com





Ignorant Americans commonly refer to Emmentaler generically as 'Swiss cheese'. Those who know anything about cheeses would never be so sloppy.

My favourite Swiss cheese is Tete de Moine. But to try it you will first have to buy a 'girolle'. 
Tête de Moine AOP

I once took a girolle and Tete de Moine cheese to a wine and cheese party for people to try. At one point in the evening, instead of rotating the scraping blade to make rosettes, some idiot cut a wedge out of the cheese which totally ruins it then for the proper method. Why is it I think that would be you off.by.10.


----------



## off.by.10 (Mar 16, 2014)

Longtimeago said:


> LOL, as a debater off.by.10, you are a dismal failure. At least Plugging Along and cainvest are capable of advancing their own rebuttals. You apparently can't come up with one at all.


I can. I've simply been around the internet long enough to know when it's pointless.



Plugging Along said:


> Don't feel bad if your math logic was corrected by a grade schooler, she is nationally ranked in math in in Canada. She will bring this to her math coach next week to see if the rest of the class gets it.


I was reading your post and was about to reply that your child must be exceptionally gifted to come up with all that ;-) Most adults don't understand math half as well. I hope she keeps enjoying it and puts her ability to good use.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> LOL, as a debater off.by.10, you are a dismal failure. At least Plugging Along and cainvest are capable of advancing their own rebuttals. You apparently can't come up with one at all.
> 
> By the way, only ONE Swiss cheese comes with holes. To say 'as many holes as Swiss (it is capitalized by the way) cheese' is actually a very sloppy and incorrect saying. Switzerland produces many different kinds of cheese of which only Emmentaler cheese has holes.
> 
> ...


My children are reading over my shoulder and says this is a first. My oldest is a ranked debated on her debate. She says when people run out of logical discussion they usually end up in a Hilter comparison, constitution rights, or other taking a weird fact/statistic that no one can argue to distract opponents or sometimes as a back up plan if backed in a corner and she knows shes got nothing. . She makes it part of preparations to come up with weird analogies that can be used for her debates. She knows the tricks and can call people out on them or uses them herself. She has never seen a cheese argument. My two kids are killing themselves laughing and seeing if we have any more Emmentaler. 
My oldest commends you for coming up with this, she may use it once debate starts up next year. She just said, well everyone loves cheese, how can you argue cheese and even if it has nothing to do with COVID or seniors death.

She has put in her notes to start a rebuttal 'I would like to first refute my honorable opponents arguments who have more wholes than a finely made Emmentalar...' She says it's sound pretentious and will use it when she goes against the 'entitled' private school kids.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

off.by.10 said:


> I can. I've simply been around the internet long enough to know when it's pointless.
> 
> 
> I was reading your post and was about to reply that your child must be exceptionally gifted to come up with all that ;-) Most adults don't understand math half as well. I hope she keeps enjoying it and puts her ability to good use.


Yeah, both my kids are tested as exceptionally gifted and math is one of their stronger areas. Ironically, they don't like math that much, so when I find opportunities that adults in real life can use it or don't know how to use it, they seem to understand why it's important. 

They are gifted academically, but don't always have the EQ and diplomacy when things come so easily. Like some members here, they can come off as sarcastic jerks when they don't mean to be. So I try to show them examples. In all fairness, I did smooth out what they really said, but the little one did the math. 

Right now, they are having debates of seniors and cheese while having fits of laughter. You would never know they are gifted.


----------



## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

off.by.10 said:


> I can. I've simply been around the internet long enough to know when it's pointless.


lol, so true.

Ever notice that most of LTA's replies are just filled with belittling and condescending comments with little (or nothing at all) to do with the point being discussed?


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Plugging Along said:


> My math and logic are correct. I cannot tell if it's your comprehension, reading ability, or inability to look at the over numbers. You managed to cherry pick just the numbers you wanted without an overall picture to compare apples to apples.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Another nice try. Here's the thing. I don't care how many per million will die or how your children are taught to do a math problem that is irrelevant to the issue of seniors in Canada dying. All that matters is how many of those seniors will get sick and will die. What we are trying to do is avoid seniors getting the virus and dying. Here is the part your daughter got close to right.

*"However, if you are a senior that gets COVID in Canada, you are more likely to be a 'goner"*

If you are a senior in Canada it appears you are more than 3 times as likely to GET the virus. That's the point that matters. Of those seniors that GET the virus in either the UK or Canada, the prognosis is much the same, both are as likely to be 'goners'. So what we should be doing is trying to keep the number of seniors who do GET the virus to as low a percentage as possible.

Of all those dying from the virus, in the UK 15% are seniors while in Canada it is 50%. They die in equal numbers once they GET the virus. We do have to extrapolate from the data that we can take the number of reported deaths and PRESUME a corresponding number of those getting it to begin with. In other words if 100 get the virus in the UK or in Canada, an equal number survive or die. If care is equal in both countries then deaths will correspond to the number infected.

So what is not equal then is the care in the two countries. The UK is doing a better job in terms of care in that either they are doing a better job once the senior is infected OR a lower percentage of seniors are GETTING the virus. That is what matters. If we are abandoning seniors in residences as has been happening or we are allowing a higher percentage to get infected to begin with that is what the comparison shows us needs to be changed.

You might also want to tell your children that people dye their hair. If you are talking about deaths and people dying, then people 'die'.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Plugging Along said:


> My children are reading over my shoulder and says this is a first. My oldest is a ranked debated on her debate. She says when people run out of logical discussion they usually end up in a Hilter comparison, constitution rights, or other taking a weird fact/statistic that no one can argue to distract opponents or sometimes as a back up plan if backed in a corner and she knows shes got nothing. . She makes it part of preparations to come up with weird analogies that can be used for her debates. She knows the tricks and can call people out on them or uses them herself. She has never seen a cheese argument. My two kids are killing themselves laughing and seeing if we have any more Emmentaler.
> My oldest commends you for coming up with this, she may use it once debate starts up next year. She just said, well everyone loves cheese, how can you argue cheese and even if it has nothing to do with COVID or seniors death.
> 
> She has put in her notes to start a rebuttal 'I would like to first refute my honorable opponents arguments who have more wholes than a finely made Emmentalar...' She says it's sound pretentious and will use it when she goes against the 'entitled' private school kids.


Entirely off topic for a minute here. 

Is English not the first language in your home Plugging Along? I ask because besides your repeated use of the word dye instead of die, I notice quite a few other grammar and spelling mistakes.

For example in the above you write, 'says' in your first sentence when it should be 'say'. In the second sentence you write 'debated' instead of 'debater'. There are several more, I won't list them. I can understand typos or just writing hurriedly and not checking before posting but some of the mistakes just make me wonder if English is your first language or not.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

cainvest said:


> lol, so true.
> 
> Ever notice that most of LTA's replies are just filled with belittling and condescending comments with little (or nothing at all) to do with the point being discussed?


Umm and off.by.10's comments are full of useful input to a discussion cainvest? The best off.by.10 can ever come up with is 'I don't want to waste my time responding'. If yet to see an actual rebuttal of anything. 

I know you like to jump on board at any opportunity cainvest but do you really want to align yourself with off.by.10? I would have thought you wouldn't want to embarrass yourself with that kind of an alliance.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Off to have fresh baked croissants for lunch. See you all tomorrow no doubt.


----------



## off.by.10 (Mar 16, 2014)

Plugging Along said:


> Yeah, both my kids are tested as exceptionally gifted and math is one of their stronger areas. Ironically, they don't like math that much, so when I find opportunities that adults in real life can use it or don't know how to use it, they seem to understand why it's important.
> 
> They are gifted academically, but don't always have the EQ and diplomacy when things come so easily. Like some members here, they can come off as sarcastic jerks when they don't mean to be. So I try to show them examples. In all fairness, I did smooth out what they really said, but the little one did the math.
> 
> Right now, they are having debates of seniors and cheese while having fits of laughter. You would never know they are gifted.


I get the idea lol One of mine's a gifted extrovert. Had to teach him to not constantly repeat "but that's easy!!!" or the like to others who don't understand as quickly. Thankfully, his brother keeps to himself. I still have no clue which one is better at math though. I have no difficulty believing the little one did the math, it just does not really make a compelling argument about it being easy.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Entirely off topic for a minute here.
> 
> Is English not the first language in your home Plugging Along? I ask because besides your repeated use of the word dye instead of die, I notice quite a few other grammar and spelling mistakes.
> 
> For example in the above you write, 'says' in your first sentence when it should be 'say'. In the second sentence you write 'debated' instead of 'debater'. There are several more, I won't list them. I can understand typos or just writing hurriedly and not checking before posting but some of the mistakes just make me wonder if English is your first language or not.


Yep, not my first language, though I was born here. There are six languages in my house. Yep, will have spelling and grammatical, it's difficult working from home, working with my two kids, while quickly typing on an Ipad on and off while I am on a conference call. Ironically, I may have had dye on my head, as my kid cleaning the DYE on the bathroom from re-DYING her hair. 

Appreciate that you cannot argue my logic or content, but take the time to criticize my grammar, typing and spelling. which is an indication on that you have no response. I would much rather be have my grammar, typing and spelling incorrect by my thinking intact that sharing incorrect logic in a grammatically correct way. Kind of like I would rather have a doctor that knows how to treat illness than they can correct spell illness. 

I am fully aware that I often don't take the time to check my spelling, typos, or grammar when on forums. I have it in my signature.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Another nice try. Here's the thing. I don't care how many per million will die or how your children are taught to do a math problem that is irrelevant to the issue of seniors in Canada dying. All that matters is how many of those seniors will get sick and will die. What we are trying to do is avoid seniors getting the virus and dying. Here is the part your daughter got close to right.
> 
> *"However, if you are a senior that gets COVID in Canada, you are more likely to be a 'goner"*
> 
> ...


My kids read your response. I have would have to agree that 'Okay boomer' would be an appropriate time for them to use that phase.

The older one thinks I should try this because you can't understand math. She really wanted to correct your math again, but won't. She is smarter than me. 

Given the same number of seniors, more will get infecting in the UK and more will die. In Canada, less people will get infected, but out of those that do, more of them will be seniors. There will be LESS seniors dead in Canada. Less dead seniors is generally good, but she can see how some on this board don't a lot of value. But doesn't think the virus targets the annoying ones.

UPDATED: Using actual math by an 11 year old, a senior in the UK has just over *DOUBLE* the chance of dying from COVIID than a senior in Canada.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

off.by.10 said:


> I get the idea lol One of mine's a gifted extrovert. Had to teach him to not constantly repeat "but that's easy!!!" or the like to others who don't understand as quickly. Thankfully, his brother keeps to himself. I still have no clue which one is better at math though. I have no difficulty believing the little one did the math, it just does not really make a compelling argument about it being easy.


I have one that is introverted turning more extroverted, the other is extroverted, but has become more introverted because she gets into trouble with those that don't share her wit. She is extremely witty and hilariously, but lacks patience with 'annoying' people can throw zingers at children and adults alike. This has gotten her into a little hot water. She has great EQ so flies under the raider. The older one is more reserved and serious and can come across as being a little condescending. She speaks most eloquently and does all the editing for house (she won't do my forums though). 

They had to get tested for the schools, and ironically their IQs are the exact same score, but in different areas. My two kids have very different personalities. The oldest though more introverted is gifted in written and verbal, and in linear constructs. The younger one is extremely creative and is better in the abstracts areas but someone amazing on the problem solving in mathematics. It's amazing watching them especially when working together. I think if the two put their mind to it, they could solve some of the problems of the world. However, arguing with them is not a good thing.

Sorry, I know that was totally off topic. Love a chance to share about my kids. Its one of those things that brings pure joy especially in times like this.


----------



## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

Longtimeago said:


> I know you like to jump on board at any opportunity cainvest but do you really want to align yourself with off.by.10?


lol, not "at any opportunity", that would be a full time job with the number of posts you do. 

Nothing to do with aligning myself, he made a correct statement and I agree with it which doesn't mean I won't disagree with him at a later date .... who knows. I'm sure others would agree with us as well but it seems you're on many member's "ignore list" here so they won't be responding.


----------



## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

Longtimeago said:


> Off to have fresh baked croissants for lunch. See you all tomorrow no doubt.


Off as well, very nice day out today .... off to Timmy's Drive-Thru then hit the park with the dog and finally come home to get my motorcycle ready for a weekend ride.

See you tomorrow!


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

They gave us an IQ test in high school. I got called into the office and was informed I was an "underachiever".

I spent my life proving them right.......


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

There are no accurate statistics on COVID..........end of story.

China just arbitrarily doubled the number of deaths in Wuhan. They just took a wild guess because people weren't tested.

Italy had to raise the number of deaths because they were hidden by a mayor in the hotbed of infections.

There are many unreported COVID deaths in Canada (mostly among seniors) because the nursing and resident homes didn't report them as COVID deaths.

There is/was no testing on dead patients, so they don't know if they died of COVID or other causes.

The data is nothing but made up BS. All we know for sure is seniors are at very high risk of death from the virus.

We know this because we can observe what happens in nursing homes and in the hospital ICU units.

It will never be known how many were infected or how many of each age group died. They don't even know if the tests are accurate.

What they are learning is that while the COVID kills seniors, it also leaves much younger survivors with severe health problems.

Even those who survive a bad bout of the virus, are likely to have permanent damage to their lungs, heart, and neurological system.

They know that many people show no symptoms while other people go into the hospital not feeling well and are dead 15 minutes later.

The best advice is stay home to stay safe because this virus is very nasty. There is no other option until we know more about this killer virus.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> I am in agreement with sags on this one. Ford is not looking very good right now in his responses re the seniors residences. They only did 9 inspections in all of 2019 and that was on Fords' watch, so he has to take the responsibility for that. But that is for future consideration by the voters. Right now, he needs to make some quick decisions to deal with the situation as it IS and that doesn't seem to be happening quickly enough.


Ontario performed 2800 inspections of long term care homes last year. They post all of them on a website I linked to previously in this thread.


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

sags said:


> How many people would apply for a job on a dementia ward if the job description was the reality .....expect to be swore at, kicked, punched, spit at, and have people expose themselves to you on a daily basis?
> 
> ... People have done these jobs because it was all that was available. As other jobs become available they have other choices for employment ...


Not really ... the dementia floor is one floor of five. Pretty much everyone going onto the floor _trained_ for it. IIRC, for the home my mother was in, the dementia area was more like one sixth of the total home.

There's a lot more options that simply the dementia floor so it is misleading to make is sound like that's what everyone has to deal with each day. It's kink of like saying the shipping clerk is what all the corporate employees have to deal with.


As I say, what bugs my friend is those who are going and are training others to cut corners as they are in it for the pay cheque, not to help the resident like she is.


Cheers


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

Longtimeago said:


> The answer to that to a degree at least Eclectic12 is to require qualifications that are not easy to get. Instead of having many workers with minimal qualifications, turn the jobs into a profession with qualifications that take time and effort to get. Those in it just for a pay cheque will simply not be willing to go through that process ...


That's only going to work to a certain degree. Some of the worst examples of the same thing that I've run into the corporate world have lots of those professional qualifications.



Longtimeago said:


> ... But I doubt that anyone just looking for a pay cheque would start on the path to becoming an RN.


The point is what they are doing now - not what they started out thinking.

Regardless, I know people who were trying to talk their sibling into training to be a nurse as they had experience in another country. The sibling decided to be a hotel house keeper because she didn't realise that a nurse in Canada does a lot less than a nurse in the home country.

Cheers


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

Longtimeago said:


> ... If it required specific dementia related skills and qualifications to be ALLOWED to work on a dementia ward, those doing it would be doing it because they CHOSE to work with dementia patients. Instead of minimal qualifications to clean bedpans, try staffing dementia wards with no less than fully qualified Psychiatric Nurses (RPN) and pay them what they are worth ...


Perhaps you are talking about private retirement homes?

Or are you suggesting that the LTC home _increase_ the number of RPNs on the dementia floor?
My friend is an RPN and isn't alone on the floor. 

There's also PSWs working with the RPNs and the overall in charge RN.


Cheers


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

MrMatt said:


> Yes they are, and I believe she even explained why. The homes are short staffed, and they have part timers who work 2 part time jobs.
> 
> If they simply ruled they can't do that, they'd have an acute worker shortage immediately. So they gave them a short period to try and figure it out ...


Which also doesn't necessarily reflect what's happening in the local home.

As I say, the home my friend works at was stopping people from working at multiple homes back on March 30th at the latest. Where the worker informed the DoC of their choice, she said that the DoC was phoning the other home to ensure the worker didn't change their mind later.


Cheers


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

MrMatt said:


> Ontario performed 2800 inspections of long term care homes last year. They post all of them on a website I linked to previously in this thread.


The article said those were inspections responding to specific incidents. They weren't thorough audits of the home.

You are dancing to the "Doug Ford shuffle"......


----------



## Spudd (Oct 11, 2011)

sags said:


> The article said those were inspections responding to specific incidents. They weren't thorough audits of the home.
> 
> You are dancing to the "Doug Ford shuffle"......


What are you talking about? They audit every home annually, and they come more often if there are complaints from residents or family members. 

You can view the inspection reports on the Ontario long term care website. I have been looking at long term care lately so I have read many of the inspection reports.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Eclectic12 said:


> Perhaps you are talking about private retirement homes?
> 
> Or are you suggesting that the LTC home _increase_ the number of RPNs on the dementia floor?
> My friend is an RPN and isn't alone on the floor.
> ...


None of which changes the conditions they work under. There was a labor shortage long before the COVID erupted.

Healthcare and the public service have been Ford targets since he was elected. The chickens have come home to roost.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

MrMatt said:


> Ontario performed 2800 inspections of long term care homes last year. They post all of them on a website I linked to previously in this thread.


Nope........JTA is correct. The Ministry performed only 9 nursing home audits last year for their more than 600 nursing homes.

They responded to specific incidents, which they are required by law to do. Incidents could be an assault or injury and have nothing to do with a full audit of the nursing homes, which reviews staffing, protocols, discussions with staff, patient representatives and operators of the home.

Regardless of the excuses, it was a responsibility of the Provincial government that has been carried on by past Provincial governments.

Some are calling it a dereliction of duty to eliminate the inspections to reduce public service workers.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> The article said those were inspections responding to specific incidents. They weren't thorough audits of the home.
> 
> You are dancing to the "Doug Ford shuffle"......


Yes? And?

Are you suggesting that they should prioritize routine inspections over complaints and injuries/deaths?
Surely you think that if there is a complaint, it should be investigated with a very high priority.

In 2012 they performed 2240 inspections and 2600 in 2014. 

The "Doug Ford Shuffle", that's a good one, but did you really expect him to dramatically alter the ministry of long term care inspection policy in his first 6 months?
I thought the complaint with Doug Ford was he was changing too much too fast? I thought he was moving a bit too fast.
Is it now that he didn't fix every single problem from the previous government? 


I wasn't a big fan of Doug Ford, I was more of a "not Wynne" person. 
But yes, I think Doug is doing a good job, he's supportive of EVERYONE, except the bad Trump policies.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Eclectic12 said:


> Which also doesn't necessarily reflect what's happening in the local home.
> 
> As I say, the home my friend works at was stopping people from working at multiple homes back on March 30th at the latest. Where the worker informed the DoC of their choice, she said that the DoC was phoning the other home to ensure the worker didn't change their mind later.
> 
> ...


That is good but irrelevant to workers still working in multiple homes today.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

But under Doug Ford the Ministry went from annual audits to 0, except for the 9 homes.

People will be asking the reasons for that. How will Doug Ford explain it to those who lost loved ones ?


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Eclectic12 said:


> That's only going to work to a certain degree. Some of the worst examples of the same thing that I've run into the corporate world have lots of those professional qualifications.
> 
> The point is what they are doing now - not what they started out thinking.
> 
> ...


Been in a hospital lately ?

I had emergency appendix surgery last year and never even saw the surgeon. I had a cardiac ablation last year and only met the doc the next day.

The nurses do everything to keep the hospitals running. I suspect your friend would have to certify and that is the real reason for her reluctance.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> But under Doug Ford the Ministry went from annual audits to 0, except for the 9 homes.
> 
> People will be asking the reasons for that. How will Doug Ford explain it to those who lost loved ones ?


I am not aware of any time in history that there were annual inspections of even a significant portion of long term care 
homes. I do believe in one good year they inspected almost 10%. Which is low. But it's much higher than the rate of workplace inspections. 
It is lower than food service inspections in London., but those are done by the health unit.

How will Doug Ford explain it? Simple, they've never had enough inspections, and he was working on fixing the other problems first. 

sags, I think you're trolling.
I think you made up the claim that there were annual audits of long term care homes.
I am not aware of any year they had more than a few dozen full audits.


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

sags said:


> None of which changes the conditions they work under. There was a labor shortage long before the COVID erupted.
> 
> Healthcare and the public service have been Ford targets since he was elected. The chickens have come home to roost.


Meh ... my friend was complaining when the Liberals were in power so from her POV, there hasn't been a difference.




sags said:


> ... I suspect your friend would have to certify and that is the real reason for her reluctance.


You seem to have misunderstood. 

One sister without nursing training decided to switch from being a nanny to being an RPN. She recommended to her sister who had been a nurse in another country to do the same. The RPN was offered a job in the hospital but didn't like it so she ended up in the LTC home. 

The other sister said being a nurse was too hard so she wasn't interested in going to school and became a hotel housekeeper. She had the benefit of being able to find out what the schooling was like and what the job was like but decided against it.


Cheers


*PS*
IMO a better example of certification being an issue is the wife of a friend of my dad. She did her original training as a nurse and told her husband while starting her ninth set of certification exams that future moves had to be to where she was already certified.


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

MrMatt said:


> ... How will Doug Ford explain it? Simple, they've never had enough inspections, and he was working on fixing the other problems first.


There's also the inconvenient Liberal inspection cutbacks to inspections.



> Three years after it vowed to do more to protect nursing home residents, Ontario’s Liberal government is quietly pulling the plug on yearly inspections at more than 500 homes, Postmedia News has learned.
> 
> Starting next week, 84 per cent of Ontario’s 630 long-term care homes will get a full inspection just once every three year ... In the years that they don’t get full inspections, homes will face inspectors with half the manpower, half the time and new limits on what they can do ...
> 
> ...











Ontario's move to scale back full annual inspections at nursing homes means 'less eyes' on elderly: advocate


Sources say provincial Liberals pulling the plug on yearly inspections at more than 500 homes, just three years after being found in violation of own law




nationalpost.com






Cheers


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

The article you linked to said the homes would be inspected every year, and more thoroughly every 3rd year.

The Ford government wasn't even doing that minimum amount of inspections.

The people of Ontario wait for his explanation as more infections and deaths explode all over the Province.

The people might forgive Ford if he admitted that he made terrible mistakes and vowed to do everything in his power to fix the problem.

But then again.........probably not. I think this is a career ending story for Doug Ford because it won't end anytime soon.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> The article you linked to said the homes would be inspected every year, and more thoroughly every 3rd year.
> 
> The Ford government wasn't even doing that minimum amount of inspections.
> 
> ...


They didn't even have annual inspections before the Liberals slashed them to their current pathetic levels.

Ford is doing everything in his power to fix the mess the Liberals made.

In his first 3 months they added 640 more beds to deal with the seasonal flu.
Maybe he should have upped inspections, maybe it was right to fund more hospital beds. Who knows.

Come on, back up your claim that there were annual inspections. You just like making up stuff because you are so blindly Liberal. 

Even the Ontario Liberal leader has admitted Ford is doing a pretty decent job. For all his faults, he cares, and his team is doing a pretty decent job. He also isn't blaming people for the problems, he's just working through them.

Not like Trudeau sitting there lying to us.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Plugging Along said:


> Yep, not my first language, though I was born here. There are six languages in my house. Yep, will have spelling and grammatical, it's difficult working from home, working with my two kids, while quickly typing on an Ipad on and off while I am on a conference call. Ironically, I may have had dye on my head, as my kid cleaning the DYE on the bathroom from re-DYING her hair.
> 
> Appreciate that you cannot argue my logic or content, but take the time to criticize my grammar, typing and spelling. which is an indication on that you have no response. I would much rather be have my grammar, typing and spelling incorrect by my thinking intact that sharing incorrect logic in a grammatically correct way. Kind of like I would rather have a doctor that knows how to treat illness than they can correct spell illness.
> 
> I am fully aware that I often don't take the time to check my spelling, typos, or grammar when on forums. I have it in my signature.


Actually Plugging Along, I was not criticizing your grammar or spelling I was simple wondering why there were so many errors when you do seem to be fairly intelligent and articulate. The one did not match up with the other unless there was some outside reason for that such as it not being a first language.

Don't be so quick to think you are being insulted. It was in fact the opposite that prompted me to ask the question of first language.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Plugging Along said:


> My kids read your response. I have would have to agree that 'Okay boomer' would be an appropriate time for them to use that phase.
> 
> The older one thinks I should try this because you can't understand math. She really wanted to correct your math again, but won't. She is smarter than me.
> 
> ...


Well we aren't going to agree on the math ever Plugging Along. You and your kids believe what you believe and I believe differently. A senior in a senior's residence in Canada has a higher risk of dying than a senior in a seniors residence in the UK. I'll leave it at that.

Instead of arguing math, let's go back to the subject of this thread and the basic questions of the issue. Is our healthcare for seniors doing a relatively good job or not? Yes or no? I believe the answer is an absolute no. Our seniors residences are doing a terrible job of protecting the residents. Do you agree or disagree? Yes or no?

That is what matters and what needs to be changed.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

I also thought Ford was doing a good job, but the revelations on nursing homes is the kind of catastrophic event that topples governments.

If Ford can survive it remains to be seen, but it is going to require a lot more than thoughts and prayers.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> I also thought Ford was doing a good job, but the revelations on nursing homes is the kind of catastrophic event that topples governments.
> 
> If Ford can survive it remains to be seen, but it is going to require a lot more than thoughts and prayers.


You say that, but as the articles in this thread show, it was the LIBERALS who did all these cuts to long term care.

You've talked many times about how bad Ford is, but you actually can't point to the action he did that caused the problems. I think you are so partisanly Liberal you can't even conceive of the idea that they did anything you disapprove of.
In this case it's the Liberals cutting Long term home inspections, and you blame Ford. He wasn't even in provincial politics when the Liberals made those cuts.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

The Ford government cut the number of inspections, despite being warned by health care groups.

Now he has to answer for his decision. The Premier is accountable to the people.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> The Ford government cut the number of inspections, despite being warned by health care groups.
> 
> Now he has to answer for his decision. The Premier is accountable to the people.


Please support that statement with data. Or is this another of your unfounded accusations.
If Ford cut inspections, how come the 2800 performed last year, lie on the line of linear growth from the early 2010's. 

You seem to have a habit of posting partisan nonsense, without any supporting data. I'm not wasting my time until you provide data to support your assertations.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

The Ministry conducted on 9 full inspections in 2019. The Ford government's cut inspections to reduce spending.



https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/seniors-homes-infection-control-1.5534770



The Ford government has been slashing healthcare spending, including long term care inspections since he was elected.









UPDATE: Mounting Health Care Cuts - Ontario Health Coalition


List of the Ford government health care cuts to date: Cut OHIP+ so families with sick children will have to seek private coverage first and pay




www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> The Ministry conducted on 9 full inspections in 2019. The Ford government's cut inspections to reduce spending.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This is exactly my point.
You claim Ford cut annual inspections, but the "evidence" you post shows.
1. Two different inspections that both started declining under the Liberl governments.
2. No evidence that Ford cut the inspections.

Finally his health care "cuts", from a political advocacy group.

For example
Cut OHIP+ so families with sick children will have to seek private coverage first and pay deductibles and co-payments (June 2018). This affects me, do you know what it means? I show my drug plan card, and I get my medications covered under that insurance. Shifting cost from government to private insurers is bad?

The $330 million mental health cut never actually happened. Instead he boosted annual health care funding by $190 million. The "$330 million" cut is based on the Ford government not fulfilling Liberal election promises of $520 million.
It is NOT a cut to not implement other parties election platform promises.


In short, your "evidence".
1. Doesn't support your points.
2. Is highly partisan and misleading.

There is a reason I don't quite fraser institute opinion pieces.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

Who CARES whether the Liberals or the Conservatives cut inspections. The truth is that BOTH have cut senior care for decades. You guys are just going off topic to play the 'blame game'.

The point is that inspections have not been being done adequately and we see the results. Does anyone disagree with that? If not, then move on to what needs to happen in the future. That's the topic of this thread, 'future seniors care.'


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> Who CARES whether the Liberals or the Conservatives cut inspections. The truth is that BOTH have cut senior care for decades. You guys are just going off topic to play the 'blame game'.
> 
> The point is that inspections have not been being done adequately and we see the results. Does anyone disagree with that? If not, then move on to what needs to happen in the future. That's the topic of this thread, 'future seniors care.'


I completely agree. I just get fired up by people spewing lies and made up facts into the conversation. It's a distraction from actually discussing it.

I think Long term care homes should have full ISO9000 type audits every 3 years, and regular spot audits for areas of particular concern.
There are some things that should be checked every year, (kitchens are) some more often, and some things that can do with less regular inspections (HR policies). And some on demand, ie follow up after a major policy change.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

I have another question about what is happening. I am not sure if when we hear about senior residence deaths that those deaths are happening IN the seniors residences or are happening in hospitals. 

If you or I start to display symptoms, we are told to phone first and seek advice. We may then be told to go for a test. If we test positive we may then be told to self-isolate at home. If your symptoms are severe we may instead be directed to a hospital immediately. If we are self-isolating after testing positive and our symptoms become severe, we are expected to get to a hospital for admittance. That is the process as I understand it, have I got it right?

So now look at the process for seniors in a seniors residence. If they show symptoms they are tested IN the seniors home and if positive the seniors residence staff are expected to isolate them IN the seniors residence. If they get worse, at what point do they get transferred to a hospital or do they get transferred at all? This is what I am not clear about.

Also, why are the staff told to isolate them in the seniors residence when in fact they really can't do so effectively? Why is a positive case not taken OUT of the seniors residence immediately and put in hospital? Why if a staff member tests positive are they told to go home and self-isolate to get them out of the residence where they could transmit the virus but a resident is not taken out of the residence for the same reason?

This is not adding up for me.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> I have another question about what is happening. I am not sure if when we hear about senior residence deaths that those deaths are happening IN the seniors residences or are happening in hospitals.
> 
> If you or I start to display symptoms, we are told to phone first and seek advice. We may then be told to go for a test. If we test positive we may then be told to self-isolate at home. If your symptoms are severe we may instead be directed to a hospital immediately. If we are self-isolating after testing positive and our symptoms become severe, we are expected to get to a hospital for admittance. That is the process as I understand it, have I got it right?
> 
> ...


This question was asked to the Minister of Health, but really it's a question of what is right for the patient.

Firstly, if you've only got mild symptoms, you should stay at home. 
When it gets bad, go to hospital.

I don't know how many are free, but if all "old people" with covid went to the hospital, we might have a problem.
Assuming 50% of cases are older adults, that could be 5k beds just for them.

We only have so many beds, we had 30k beds (total), and we still have non-COVID19 to deal with.


https://www.oha.com/Documents/Ontario%20Hospitals%20-%20Leaders%20in%20Efficiency.pdf



With 77k long term care beds, if it spreads in homes, we'll easily overwhelm hospital capacity.

But this is much higher due to the field hospitals they've built.

Finally I have heard that a lot of the increase in cases is they're actually testing everyone in and working at care homes, and they're finding a lot of new cases there that weren't previously flagged as symptomatic.
This is good and bad. Good that we have older people who are asymptomatic. Bad that we have COVID19 in many long term care homes. 

I think the short answer is we can't logistically, pull every case and put in a hospital. We don't have the space, or resources.

I'm not a health care professional, but I recognize there are cases where the care needs vary.

As bad as it may seem, if you have an elderly person, with covid19, and perhaps mental health issues, this could be disasterous. Imagine being a person who isn't capable of comprehending the new situation you've been thrust into. You're not feeling particularlly ill, and you've been cut off from human contact and all your familiar surroundings. It might be better to be in your room, in isolation, with caregivers you recognize.

I can't imagine how the hospital would deal with dozens or hundreds of new dementia patients. Yes I'm picking on mental illness, but that's one population that would be particularly problematic.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

MrMatt said:


> This question was asked to the Minister of Health, but really it's a question of what is right for the patient.
> 
> Firstly, if you've only got mild symptoms, you should stay at home.
> When it gets bad, go to hospital.
> ...


So you are saying that you think it is as I suspect, that residents testing positive and even those getting very sick are NOT being transferred to hospitals and are dying IN senior residences, not in hospitals. 

IF so, that is absolutely wrong. Anyone of any age who becomes seriously sick should be taken to hospital. To say, we can't 'logistically' do so is in fact saying we are going to triage seniors and let them die. That's the bottom line if that is what is happening.

Re mental health issues, I understand that point but what if someone is perfectly lucid and CAN understand the situation. Think of if it were YOU. You know you have it, you know you are getting very sick and you KNOW they are not taking you to a hospital. Now suppose it is your relative and you find out this is what is happening to them. I'd start banging heads together or worse if I were able to do so.

You can't take an example of mental health issues and use it as an excuse to ignore the other side of the coin MrMatt.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

They were dying in the nursing homes LTA. Some families can't even locate the bodies of their loved ones.

The homes failed to separate the infected from everyone else. Hundreds of LTA workers got infected and many simply walked away from the job.

There was nobody in the homes to look after the sick and dying. There was no PPE. There were no plans to deal with infections.

That is why audits were so important to maintain.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> So you are saying that you think it is as I suspect, that residents testing positive and even those getting very sick are NOT being transferred to hospitals and are dying IN senior residences, not in hospitals.
> 
> IF so, that is absolutely wrong. Anyone of any age who becomes seriously sick should be taken to hospital. To say, we can't 'logistically' do so is in fact saying we are going to triage seniors and let them die. That's the bottom line if that is what is happening.


I said no such thing.

I said I don't think all people testing positive should be immediately transferred to the hospital as that might not be the best place for them. If they are not very sick, it might be best to leave them in place in their residence.

I agree, that those who require hospitalization should be put in the hospital.
If someone is not getting the appropriate level of care, this is a problem. 

I fail to see what you disagree with in my post. You seem to be disagreeing with statements I never made.


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

sags said:


> The article you linked to said the homes would be inspected every year, and more thoroughly every 3rd year.
> The Ford government wasn't even doing that minimum amount of inspections ....


If you read the article, you'd have seen that the Liberals passed a law in 2010 requiring annual inspections, with the Liberal minister of health Deb Matthews claiming the inspections weren't needed. Essentially breaking the law.

In 2013, Matthews changed course saying the number of inspectors would be doubled.

In 2015 the auditor general noted that the backlog of inspections triggered by complaints or critical incidents doubled.

In 2016, the Liberal response was to pull the plug on annual inspections to go to three years between inspections. Inspections of high risk homes was kept the same frequency while low risk homes had theirs dropped.




sags said:


> ... The people of Ontario wait for his explanation as more infections and deaths explode all over the Province.


The Liberals promised, failed and cut back on inspections for at minimum five years while Ford has done whatever in two years but it's all Ford's fault, right? 


Blaming only Ford is a recipe for a failed solution.


Cheers


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

The Liberals didn't face a crisis over their decisions. Ford is facing a crisis over his. Call it bad luck for Ford if you want.

_The buck stops here._.........should be a reminder on every leader's desk, because that is how the public views it.

If the Ford government are going to try to explain why they aren't responsible with a comprehensive history lesson of the past, he has already lost.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> The Liberals didn't face a crisis over their decisions. Ford is facing a crisis over his. Call it bad luck for Ford if you want.
> 
> _The buck stops here._.........should be a reminder on every leader's desk, because that is how the public views it.
> 
> If the Ford government are going to try to explain why they aren't responsible with a comprehensive history lesson of the past, he has already lost.


Ford changed a lot, and fixed many problems in Government, the fact that he didn't fix everything a decade of Liberal mismanagement is just being realistic.

It's very clear to everyone, except the most highly partisan, that Ford cares, and is working very hard. 
That's what most people want.
He's also making a point of not blaming anyone for the problems, government is hard, and he's going to do his best to fix it.

That's honest, and refreshing, and why skeptics (like me) support him.


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

sags said:


> The Ford government cut the number of inspections, despite being warned by health care groups.
> 
> Now he has to answer for his decision. The Premier is accountable to the people.


And the Liberals made law an inspection each year, couldn't do that even once then cut out two of the next three inspections across the board.

Don't get me wrong ... I'm all for fixing the system but piling everything onto whomever is in power while ignoring what the previous gov't did is not helpful or likely to give a good solution IMO.

For all we know, booting out Ford to have a Liberal gov't may mean more promised and/laws about inspections that yield even fewer inspections.

No gov't in Ontario that I can recall have made this a priority in anything but sound bits for years.


Cheers


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

MrMatt said:


> ... It's very clear to everyone, except the most highly partisan, that Ford cares, and is working very hard.
> That's what most people want.
> 
> He's also making a point of not blaming anyone for the problems, government is hard, and he's going to do his best to fix it.
> ...


+1 ... it wasn't what I expected, giving his previous confrontational politics.

The question now is what can be done and let the investigations/finger pointing happen later.


Cheers


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

MrMatt said:


> I said no such thing.
> 
> I said I don't think all people testing positive should be immediately transferred to the hospital as that might not be the best place for them. If they are not very sick, it might be best to leave them in place in their residence.
> 
> ...


When someone writes, 'so you are saying' MrMatt, that means the person has read or heard what you said and is now trying to INTERPRET what message you were actually trying to send. In other words, your message was not clear to them.

Communication is a funny thing. It is not what message we THINK we communicated that matters, it is only the message the recipient THINKS we sent that matters. We may think we are being quite clear in what we say but in fact we often aren't. We say one thing and the recipient hears something else. That's just the way communication works and why sometimes we can communicate clearly and other times, not so clearly.

So let's move on. I agree that not everyone should be immediately transferred to hospital. But we are not talking about everyone. We are ONLY talking about seniors in a group home environment. We have to look at each case individually and the factors involved with that individual.

In the case of a group environment you cannot say, 'go home and self-isolate'. Even saying, 'stay in your room' will not achieve a truly decent degree of isolation unless the group home is equipped and the staff well trained to provide a high degree of isolation. As we have seen, what is happening is that the virus is spreading in our seniors residences rapidly once it gets a foot in the door. So that and ONLY that is what I am talking about in regards to the question of what should be happening now and in the future in our seniors residences.

If a resident in a group home of highly at risk individuals has symptoms, you cannot treat that individual case as you would if you or I showed some symptoms and was told to stay home and see what happens. What should happen in that case in my opinion is that the person should either be TRULY isolated somehow or if that is not practical given the situation, sent to hospital. 

The only way I can think of to isolate a resident would be to have something like red and green zones as in some hospitals, where staff working in the red zone do not cross into the green zone or vice versa. So you would have to have dedicated isolation rooms, dedicated staff, dedicated equipment, dedicated food service, etc. Probably not really practical for a seniors residence.

Instead, what is happening is they are not being isolated and the virus is spreading in the group home. That is undeniable. As a result, we are seeing high death rates, staff also contracting the virus because they are not properly equipped or trained and even in the case of the Herron home in Quebec, staff leaving and residents left alone in their rooms with no care at all for days. Don't forget, they were found having had no water for days, lying in their own feces, dead in their beds.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

I heard something yesterday that surprised me. It seems that the numbers being given for deaths in seniors residences in Ontario is not accurate. One of the problems as well is that they use so many different names for homes. The simplest difference though seems to be Retirement homes vs. Nursing homes which seems to correspond to Independent Living vs. Assisted Living.

Apparently, not all homes are actually reporting their numbers. _"Numbers of deaths released by the Ontario government are, according to Toronto Public Health, only those deaths that are formally recorded in the province’s integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS), the public health database, when investigations are complete."_

If all deaths are not being reported and therefore are not being counted as part of the 'official figures' then how much worse may it be than we are being told?

I believe I have heard Ford refer to 600 Long Term Care homes repeatedly but where are the 750 Retirement Homes in all this? There are a total of 1380 in total between Nursing Homes and Retirement Homes in Ontario. 









Nearly 80 seniors’ homes across Ontario are reporting cases of COVID-19: expert


Research by Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Sinai Health System and the University Health Network, found 40 deaths, most in nursing homes.




www.thestar.com


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Though most of our provincial deaths are from the seniors home, I am grateful that they have done a good job here. I believe there are 3 homes in my province that have COVID cases. It would have been disastrous if they in more like out east.

There are a few factors that will impact the number of seniors who die. The most important in protecting the seniors in home is to ensure that the virus doesn't get into the home in the first place. Some things that faired well in my mothers home were the following:

Not allowing visitors earlier. Our home starting limiting visitors to immediate family in February, screening of visitors at that time, then by mid March we only had a few travel cases and before things shut down, they eliminate all visitors.
All deliveries by family or others needed to go through the front and were sanitized and brought up by existing staff, residents not allowed in that area
Not allowing staff to work in other facilities early on. I believe this is what reduced the spread in my province. Other places, it was too late.
Screening of staff now helps too.

A large impact to the safety will be keeping the virus out in the first place, which some provinces did not do well. Once it's in, it so difficult to control.

Currently, at the home, they have implemented these extra practices:

Extra cleaning
Hand sanitizing before every meal. They help wash the residents hands before, but it's difficult to wheel each person to the sink and help them for 20 seconds for each meal plus snacks while getting them their medications and food
Reducing all of the larger gathering such as chapel. Now, each resident must stay on their own floor.
Checking staff every shift before and after
All staff now are expected to wear masks, even home made ones.

The things I see that are still risks:
- If someone does get sick, there is no place to isolate them. Most homes are filled and there is no room to put someone. Leaving a resident who has the virus there is like being on a cruise ship. They should be moving any resident into full quarantine, but the homes don't have the ability. They should either be moved to a hospital due to their high risk or to another building made for COVID which we don't have. 
-If there is a case found, they should test every single person- staff and residents. I heard our province will start to do that if there are new cases found in a home. 

Residents don't wear masks, part of the reason is most of them will not wear them properly, but something may be better than nothing.
To reduce risks, even the staff there should be assigned to the same people on their shifts. The less cross interaction the better, but this costs more and is more difficult to schedule.
Sharing of rooms. We are fortunately that my mom has her own room and most rooms are only shared with one person, but even then that becomes a risk
Reducing the interactions among residents. They still need to eat at the same time and the dinner room is crowded. It would take double the staff to split up the times.

We have asked what the plan is if they find a case at the home. They have not satisfied our requests as their answers are still to do their best to keep it out. A lot of the risks require a lot more money for staffing and space to be thrown at the problem one it enters a home. 

We received a notice indicating that if a family wants to bring their family member home they can, however, they will lose their spot after 50 days and once they bring them home, the can't bring them back. We can't do it because of the high medical attention and care required, but that may be a solution for some they take care of their own parents.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> When someone writes, 'so you are saying' MrMatt, that means the person has read or heard what you said and is now trying to INTERPRET what message you were actually trying to send. In other words, your message was not clear to them.


Yes, and when I said "I said no such thing", was my way of saying strongly that you misinterpreted my statements, and I don't see the logical path between what I said, and what you suggest I meant.




> Communication is a funny thing. It is not what message we THINK we communicated that matters, it is only the message the recipient THINKS we sent that matters. We may think we are being quite clear in what we say but in fact we often aren't. We say one thing and the recipient hears something else. That's just the way communication works and why sometimes we can communicate clearly and other times, not so clearly.
> 
> So let's move on. I agree that not everyone should be immediately transferred to hospital. But we are not talking about everyone. We are ONLY talking about seniors in a group home environment. We have to look at each case individually and the factors involved with that individual.
> 
> ...


I think the abuse/negligence is separate from COVID.

Regarding COVID, they should segregate people with Red and Green zones under certain circumstances.
Specifically they should provide the best available care, if they have minor COVID symptoms, perhaps they would get a higher quality of care for other issues by remaining at the care home. 

If the care home is not able to properly segregate, they should be moved.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Plugging........one good thing my wife's home did was to close the dining room and deliver meals to the rooms.

The Province keeps mixing up LTA, retirement homes, assisted living like they are all different and distinct. They are supposed to be but they aren't.

There are 30,000 people waiting to find a spot in a long term care facility. Many of them are waiting in retirement homes, where they shouldn't be.


----------



## Longtimeago (Aug 8, 2018)

sags said:


> Plugging........one good thing my wife's home did was to close the dining room and deliver meals to the rooms.
> 
> The Province keeps mixing up LTA, retirement homes, assisted living like they are all different and distinct. They are supposed to be but they aren't.
> 
> There are 30,000 people waiting to find a spot in a long term care facility. Many of them are waiting in retirement homes, where they shouldn't be.


I'm beginning to wonder if Ford et al are intentionally mixing them up in order to keep the public confused. When Ford says all that ask can get PPE and we then read that your wife is not being provided with PPE, their intentionally keeping us confused starts to make sense.

It is beginning to look to me like SOME places are being provided with PPE if they ask but not ALL places are being provided with it whether they are asking or not.

I'm sure I've heard Ford say several times, '600 care homes'. I'm not sure I've ever heard him say, '1380 seniors homes of all kinds'.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

Ford says a lot of things, but here is an example of what he has been doing behind the scenes.









Ford Government Taking Hard-Earned Wages Away From Frontline Long-Term Care Workers


RICHMOND HILL, ON, Feb. 13, 2020 /CNW/ - Doug Ford's government at Queen's Park is taking away modest, fairly negotiated wage increases, from nearly 100 frontline healthcare workers at Mariann Home, a not-for-profit long-term care facility in Richmond Hill, despite the employer's willingness




ca.finance.yahoo.com


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

Businesses are encouraged to have people work remotely so does anyone know what's the big deal about the supposed need for MPs to sit in person? 

Or what the technology delay is for virtual sittings?

MPs are about 338 where my company has something over 400 working remotely since pretty much March 18th.


Cheers


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> Ford says a lot of things, but here is an example of what he has been doing behind the scenes.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You mean enforcing the laws of Ontario?
You're actually complaining that the laws of Ontario are being enforced?
Ontario passed a law that public sector raises are capped at 1%, then the management decided to agree to a contract that was in violation of Ontario law. This should be investigated.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Longtimeago said:


> I'm beginning to wonder if Ford et al are intentionally mixing them up in order to keep the public confused. When Ford says all that ask can get PPE and we then read that your wife is not being provided with PPE, their intentionally keeping us confused starts to make sense.
> 
> It is beginning to look to me like SOME places are being provided with PPE if they ask but not ALL places are being provided with it whether they are asking or not.
> 
> I'm sure I've heard Ford say several times, '600 care homes'. I'm not sure I've ever heard him say, '1380 seniors homes of all kinds'.


They actually are different and distinct and they have different laws and regulations.


https://www.ontario.ca/page/seniors-find-place-to-live



However, there is a health order that Retirement homes shall follow all directives for long term care homes.


https://www.rhra.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/CMOH-Directive-5_Revised040920_FINAL-.pdf



"...all reasonable steps are required to be taken in a retirement home, to follow any directive pertaining to COVID-19 that is issued to long-term care homes under section 77.7 of the HPPA; "

Also the province is targetting 24 hour delivery of PPE to all hospitals, long term care homes, and retirement homes.


There is no mixup, they are distinct, but in regards to COVID they should be getting the same services. There are provincial orders made to this effect.


----------



## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

sags said:


> Plugging........one good thing my wife's home did was to close the dining room and deliver meals to the rooms.
> 
> The Province keeps mixing up LTA, retirement homes, assisted living like they are all different and distinct. They are supposed to be but they aren't.
> 
> There are 30,000 people waiting to find a spot in a long term care facility. Many of them are waiting in retirement homes, where they shouldn't be.


I think most people who don't have to deal with the homes don't understand. It took me months to educate myself with the difference and that was with a couple people in system helping understand more. Even then I still get mixed up. We have wait lists at many different levels. I had learned if someone is in assisted living and the home is good and able to handle them, leave them be. LTA is just helping them with their physical medical issues, but they don't have the ability to help with psychological or mental health. In my province the ratio of nurses is the same for LTA and assisted living. I always thought the higher the level of needs, the more care. Nope, same amount of people helping the same number of residents that need much more help.

Our home is not delivering the meals to the rooms. There would be people like my mom who wouldn't be able to eat. The staff is already stretched. 



Eclectic12 said:


> Businesses are encouraged to have people work remotely so does anyone know what's the big deal about the supposed need for MPs to sit in person?
> 
> Or what the technology delay is for virtual sittings?
> 
> ...


Working in public, the security needs to be very high. I would imagine the ability for MPs to work from home will be greatly dependant on their abilities before.

I know the last disaster (6 years ago), it took us a while to be able to work from home because that was not the norm. They got the essential people working, the majority were not working from home, and it was temporary. People were back in the offices in a few months. This time around, I had kept all my access from before, and already work from home and was ready to go. Our IT department already had experience from the last time, and started to work their magic. The infrastructure was already there, along with the processes, because Telework was already a norm for essential people, we had 2500 people ready to go on the first day on the Monday. 5000 by the Friday, and 7000 the end of the follow week. 

The biggest challenge was getting the people that had their own equipment vs office equipment logged in. We are still having some glitches, but I suspect because we already had a telework environment, we were up and running a lot faster than most. 

I don't know if that has been accepted with the MPs. I would there needs, technology available, and technical abilities really vary.


----------



## sags (May 15, 2010)

The Liberals, NDP, Green and Bloc voted to pass legislation limiting in person sittings of Parliament to once a week for a limited number of MPs.

The Conservatives voted against the changes. There will be a virtual Parliament for a second meeting a week for all MPs.

Many MPs didn't want to travel to Ottawa for a session and then be quarantined for 14 days when they went home.

There was also 50 Parliament employees put at risk for live sittings, so it was a good decision to make the changes.


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

Interesting week for my friend working in the local long term care home. 

She has a sensitive stomach where she called in sick on this past Wednesday with diarrhea. She received a call the following morning that diarrhea was added to the list of covid-19 symptoms so she would have to get tested for covid-19. After a negative test, she could come back to 24 hours later.

She went to the local arena designated for testing. There was no line outside so she thought it would be quick. Once inside, there was a line for registration, then a line for an interview and finally a line for being swabbed. A bit over two hours from showing up to being done. 

She was told she would be called if the test was positive and if it was negative, the result would be posted to a hospital web portal. This would allow her to print the negative test result for her employer. The results were supposed to be in within 24 hours.

The negative result was posted at sometime around the 27 hour mark from completing the test.


The admin person said to come in Monday instead of Saturday as none of the admin staff were supposed to be working on the weekend to review her results and approve her working. She got a call on Saturday about an hour after her shift would have started from a colleague saying she was on the schedule, where was she and the home was short. The same admin person was working Saturday so they eventually agree to her coming in for a shortened shift. He wanted her to come straight in but she was out running errands. What got him to agree to the time she thought was reasonable was mentioning the time that was 24 hours after she saw the test results.

Sunday when she showed up at the regular time, there were tons of medical people there to test everyone going on shift and the residents. It seems that had her test been run two hours later on Thursday, she would have avoided a second covid-19 test.

She figures the paramedics/staff doing the swabbing were trainees as the first test was uncomfortable but not bad. This second one was painful.


Cheers


----------



## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

Plugging Along said:


> ... We have wait lists at many different levels ...


When we checked for my brother, private retirement homes in his area had a two year wait list. The cheapest LTC home had a fourteen year wait list.




Plugging Along said:


> ... Working in public, the security needs to be very high. I would imagine the ability for MPs to work from home will be greatly dependant on their abilities before.


True ... our company has had dedicated security types for at least a decade.

OTOH ... presumably with specialists at CSIS and the Mounties, if the gov't wanted to use them - there's more resources than our company had/has.




Plugging Along said:


> ... I know the last disaster (6 years ago), it took us a while to be able to work from home because that was not the norm.


Capacity was the issue for our IT staff. The biggest barrier pre-covid was middle management's reluctance for another over a weekend or a few days of remote work.





Plugging Along said:


> ... The biggest challenge was getting the people that had their own equipment vs office equipment logged in.


Using home equipment was the method that the least capacity was added. The bulk of the people had remote access software pushed to their company laptop or desktop then had to schedule a time to pick the hardware up to take it home.




Plugging Along said:


> ... I don't know if that has been accepted with the MPs. I would there needs, technology available, and technical abilities really vary.


They've agree to more virtual sittings than in person ones. Though if the technology part has been taken care of, the usual hours from pre-covid should be fine or something close to it.

I'd have to check the numbers but I'm sure there's representation at the higher levels for all the provinces and maybe some territories. For the work class part, we've got a couple of people working daily from Texas. 

Cheers


----------

