A report highlighting issues in British Columbia’s residential care system has raised several points of concern regarding the care of some of the province’s most frail and vulnerable patients – seniors.
Inappropriate placement of higher-functioning seniors into residential care, the overuse of antipsychotic and antidepressant medication, and a significant gap in the level of rehabilitative therapies in B.C. relative to other provinces, are three of the findings highlighted in the April 7 report by Isobel Mackenzie, the province’s Seniors Advocate.
She was appointed in March 2014 with a mandate to monitor and review system-wide issues affecting the well-being of seniors.
“The Senior’s Advocate report is a very useful piece of work in terms of highlighting areas we know are important and we know we have to focus on going forward,” says Karen Bloemink, director of residential services for Interior Health.
100 Mile House has close to 100 residential care rooms funded by Interior Health.
“It’s very useful in terms of raising awareness,” Bloemink says of the report.
“It’s reports like this that present opportunities for us to look at our current practices and to further consider how we can improve our services. Specifically, we want to pay attention to any work that’s going on in other jurisdictions.”
B.C.’s health minister, Terry Lake, had a similar response to the report: the government is aware of these issues and is working to address them.
Bloemink says Interior Health has been attempting to address issues around the overprescribing of antipsychotic and antidepressant medications for two years. The health authority has been engaged in three different provincial initiatives to make improvements around the use of medication, she explains, including the development of care guidelines to assist clinicians with decision-making relating to symptoms of dementia.
“We are continuing to develop capacity with our staff, including physicians, around modernizing our practice.”
B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan was quick to fault the governing B.C. Liberals, calling the report “a damning indictment” of the government’s care, or lack thereof, for seniors.
“New Democrats and other advocates have been pointing out serious problems of abuse and neglect of seniors for the last decade,” Horgan states in a news release.
“These are systemic problems that can only be fixed by leadership from the provincial government – leadership that is sadly lacking.”
The province has more than 25,000 seniors living in residential care and more than 29,000 who are receiving home care, according to the report, Placement, Drugs and Therapy… We Can Do Better.
