Long-term care 'inadequate': Alberta NDP

Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason says residents of some long-term care facilities in the province are receiving reduced care because of government cutbacks.

Mason released letters from three nursing homes Monday showing staffing levels are being reduced at some of the facilities.

Alberta Health Services cut long-term care funding by three per cent in August in an attempt to erase a budget shortfall of $1.1 billion.

Mason said Covenant Health, the Good Samaritan Society and Rivercrest Care Centre have all indicated that in order to reduce costs, they have to either lay off staff or shorten work hours.

"There's a clear case where the quality of care is inadequate. They are cutting the funding, it's affecting very vulnerable people and we need to be shining a light on that," Mason told the CBC.

"The whole delivery of long-term care in this province, and the strategies being followed by the government and the impact on patients is very, very difficult to ascertain."

At the Rivercrest Care Centre, shifts were reduced from eight hours to seven hours and 45 minutes.

Mason said the situation is going to get worse because there are 1,700 people on a waiting list for long-term care. 

Private companies run majority of long-term care beds

In early May, the NDP revealed that government estimates on long-term care beds didn't square with the numbers being reported by staff on the front lines.

Mason noted then that at 90 publicly run facilities the NDP contacted, staff reported 4,664 beds, which is 371 fewer than the total claimed by the provincial government.

There are 14,582 long-term care beds across Alberta. About two-thirds are run by private operators or not-for-profit groups.

"The auditor general's report … five years ago was quite scathing in terms of the care that people received," Mason said.

"We haven't seen significant increases since that time and so further reductions, I think, are unacceptable and will produce negative impacts on people's care."

Karen Gayman, vice-president of seniors health programs for Alberta Health Services, told the CBC the staff cuts Mason is referring to are actually vacant positions that have not been filled.

"[The facilities] have addressed this issue through re-examining their organizational effectiveness and efficiency and are able to come up with those savings without directly having any impact to resident or client care," she said.