What one would, could and should take away from this latest news is that NEGLIGENCE AND MALFEASANCE, IN ABUNDANCE, was most probably the key factor in all the LTC deaths in Canada. During the"pandemic"Not the virus. Despite media spin and excessive fear mongering.
After this latest from the Globe and Mail, my four part expose on the care home situation will be relinked. As well as reporting on an increase in anti psychotics being doled out in LTC homes occurred. Most probably resulting in an increased rate of deaths during the"pandemic"
Canadians living in nursing homes received less medical care for everything from urinary tract infections to lung disease and heart failure during the early days of the pandemic, hastening the deaths of many even in provinces barely affected by the coronavirus, a new report says.
The number of residents transferred to hospital for chronic medical conditions fell 27 per cent between March 1 and Aug. 31, 2020, compared with the same period in 2019, according to the analysis from Canada’s health care statistics agency. Doctors visited 16 per cent fewer residents in the homes.
A nearly 30 percent drop in getting residents to hospital!
Nursing homes were all but forgotten during the health system’s push to ensure that hospitals were not overwhelmed.The pandemic also altered the practice of medicine across the country, as some provinces discouraged transferring the frail elderly to hospitals and online and telephone appointments between doctors and patients became common.
Negligence and Malfeasance
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) report, published Tuesday, marks the first official attempt to measure the toll these practices took on nursing home residents – those who faced both the highest needs for medical care and the highest risk from COVID-19 infections.
You can find the entire report at this link and I suggest you do.
However, the national snapshot is far from complete. Hospital transfers do not include Quebec, the province hardest hit by COVID-19 during the first wave. And only five provinces – British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador – are included in the statistics on doctor visits and the higher than usual number of deaths.
Samir Sinha, the director of geriatrics at the University Health Network and Sinai Health System and expert adviser to CIHI, said residents sickened with non COVID-19 conditions were not sent to hospital because of physician absences at the homes and a lack of medical care. For those residents afflicted with COVID-19, he said, “blatant discrimination” was behind the decision not to transfer many of them to hospital.
Would moronic Canadians awaken, please? You're giving this abuse and neglect a free pass with your acquiescence and silence. The blame is shared between yourselves and the politicians that used the deaths of these individuals to build fear and terrorize everyone. Yes, I blame you as much as Doug Ford ( Pathetic Insane leader of Ontario)
During the peak period of the first wave – March 1 to June, 30, 2020 – 13,959 residents in nursing homes died from all causes, including COVID-19, in the five provinces where data were available, the CIHI report says. By comparison, an average of 11,686 residents died during the same period over the previous five years.
I notice the Globe and Mail did a five year average instead of a year to year (averages hide higher numbers)
Ontario experienced the largest increase in excess deaths, while British Columbia’s was the smallest. Most of the 6,080 long-term care residents in Canada who succumbed to COVID-19 during the first wave died inside the virus-stricken understaffed facilities while many hospital beds sat empty.
At the onset of the pandemic, government leaders and health officials across Canada worried about averting a catastrophe in this country’s hospitals, similar to what had happened in Italy and New York. They focused most of their attention on expanding the number of available hospital beds in anticipation of an influx of patients with COVID-19.
Rhonda Collins, chief medical officer of nursing home operator Revera Inc., testified last fall at the independent commission examining the devastating impact of the coronavirus on Ontario’s long-term homes, about the push to increase capacity in the acute-care sector in preparation for a surge of COVID-19 patients.“Many homes were directed to keep residents out of hospital to the best of their abilities,” she said.
Many doctors followed that advice, which had a profound effect in limiting the availability of their in-person visits at long-term care homes, the CIHI report shows.
Residents with lung disease and heart failure bore the brunt of physician absences, with transfers to hospital falling 58 per cent and 51 per cent, respectively, the report says. Chronic health conditions are typically diagnosed by a doctor, who makes the decision on whether a patient requires hospital care.
The decreases for all chronic conditions were highest in Ontario and New Brunswick. Alberta had the lowest decreases.
Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador – two provinces with no COVID-19 fatalities in nursing homes – also transferred fewer residents with chronic health conditions to hospital. Visits by doctors to homes in Newfoundland dropped by 19 per cent, the report says.
Just over 14,700 residents and 30 staff died in long-term care and retirement homes across Canada between March 1, 2020, and Feb. 15, the report says.
The deaths account for more than two-thirds of overall fatalities in Canada from COVID-19, significantly higher than the international average of 41 per cent.
Recall:
Part 1:Ontario & Quebec Killed Their Seniors In Long Term Care In a Manner Suspiciously Similar to Other Places
Part 2: Ontario & Quebec Killed Their Seniors in Long Term Care in a Manner Suspiciously Similar To Many Other Places
Part 3: Ontario, Quebec and the UK's Uncanny Similarities in Killing their Elders in Long Term Care
Part 4: Uncanny Similarities in LTC/Nursing Home Deaths That Span Both Sides of the Atlantic Ocean-Canada, UK, US
The 'Massacre' of Italy's Elderly Nursing Home Residents