Doctor says moving Sask. seniors to rural hospitals bad idea
The former president of the Saskatchewan Medical Association says health regions should keep elderly patients in their own homes.
Earlier this month, the Saskatoon Health Region offered incentives for patients willing to move to rural areas. Patients who agree to wait for a bed at a rural hospital would have their fees waived for three months once a spot in a long-term care facility becomes available.
"We know that older patients, if they get taken out of their own environment, don't do that well," said Dr. Dalibor Slavik, board member and past president of the Saskatchewan Medical Association. "They start to become confused often, and their medical condition, instead of getting better, they get worse."
Seniors care was one of the main topics at the association's biannual conference in Saskatoon this weekend. As more and more seniors require medical care, an already-strained medical system is looking for solutions for this critical problem.
"The ideal would be to look after patients in their own community, and actually, in their own home," he said.
Slavik said other countries like Denmark pay friends and family members to look after elderly people in their own homes. He says it's much more cost-effective than creating more long-term care beds.
"I would say that 70 to 80 per cent of the care that this patient needs inside his or her home can be provided by family and friends," he said.
However, Slavik said the idea of reforming medical care for the elderly has hit government roadblocks.
"I think this may be a problem of, 'Well, this has worked for so many years, let's just carry on doing it,'" he said. "There is a little bit of resistance by the health regions, by the provincial government and by the federal government to try something new."
