Nursing Homes: to Health with them!

​Since the late 1990’s calls have been repeated to “bring nursing homes back to the Health Department” in New Brunswick.  The reason is that in the eyes of planners, it seems so simple:  “all those elderly folks waiting for placement in Nursing Homes, mostly in highly expensive hospital beds…… they could be in a nursing home if we just had control of them!” 
That is simply uninformed reasoning, simplistic logic and New Brunswick’s health and long term care is in the disarray that it is because since the mid-1990’s, knee-jerk, simplistic logic has been applied to this incredibly important and expensive two portfolios.  Primary Care has not advanced much, Emergency Services are still over-run with non-emergencies, access to specialty care continues to get worse, and doctor’s office automation stalled, Alternate Level of Care patients continue to grow.  Knee-jerk administration of the province’s most expensive and complex resource is not wise.
So my caution is simply that NB avoids another knee-jerk strategy based on false assumptions and ill-informed counsel. Read more here