Controversial law designed to free up hospital beds to be tested in Ontario court
Controversial law designed to free up hospital beds to be tested in Ontario court
A new charter challenge set to get underway on Monday will test the constitutionality of a controversial Ontario law that allows hospitals to place discharged patients into long-term care homes not of their choosing or face a $400-per-day charge if they refuse.
The law allows hospital placement coordinators to choose a nursing home for a patient who has been deemed by a doctor as requiring an "alternate level of care," or ALC, without consent. They can also share the patient's health information to such homes without consent. Patients can also be sent to nursing homes up to 70 kilometres from their preferred spot in southern Ontario and up to 150 kilometres away in northern Ontario. The law sparked outrage among seniors.
So seniors go to the hospital with a chronic health issue and get institutionalized instead?
Seniors who can’t independently care for themselves and who don’t actually need acute care anymore.
And aren’t they getting institutionalized either way? They can’t live independently anymore, so do they live in the hospital forever?
It doesn’t feel nice but I don’t think it’s fair to live in the hospital when there are homes designed for the specific care levels instead. I think the LTC system needs reform, but this feels lesser of two evils.
Wtf
One of the problems with this law is that it can strip people of their advocates. If someone is placed in a care facility 150km away from home, that means a three-hour round trip for anyone who wants to visit . . . assuming that person has a car and a driver's license and the weather and roads are good.
Let's say you live in Cochrane, don't drive, and your loved one has been placed in a home in Kapuskasing, which should be ~130km. If you want to travel to see them, your only public transit option at the moment is an Ontario Northland bus that runs three times a week. Incidentally, you'll arrive in Kap just after 1:30AM and will be stuck there until the bus back comes through just before 6:00AM the next day (assuming it is the next day and not the day after—the schedule's difficult to interpret). Kind of difficult to advocate for someone when visiting them is a two-day expedition, and they may no longer be in any condition to explain what's wrong over the phone.
I understand wanting to clear the hospital beds, but this is something that needed a lot more thought, especially when dealing with conditions in the north.
Everything about Ford is he needs to do more for the North
ONTARIO, OPEN FOR BUSINESS
This is horrible.
It would be reasonable to assume that the lack of LTC supply is at least partly because it's not profitable to have extra spaces you're not using.
That lack of supply makes it more likely that seniors would have to look at places further away.
Plus, the people profiting off LTC are folks like former Conservative Premier Mike Harris, who not only used to be chair of the board of Chartwell Retirement Residences, but has also owned millions of dollars in company shares (as of 2022, Harris no longer controls >10% of the company, so he doesn't have to file public disclosures of his holdings).
While premier, Harris also pushed hard to privatize the industry that he would later benefit from.
This looks like another case of Ford making sure his buddies rake in as much money as possible, even if it causes human misery.