Editor:
There’s a lot of misinformation flying around about the new long-term residential care facility in Sechelt. Let’s look at the facts.
Manning levels will be set in the contract with VCH according to the needs of the residents – it’s not just an arithmetic formula. Trellis Seniors Services has consistently met their contracted manning levels in their other facilities and, I am sure, will do so in Sechelt. The level of manning is completely within the control of VCH regardless of who runs the facility. Implying that the new facility will minimize manning to boost profit is nonsense. In fact, it would be in the contractor’s interest to have higher manning levels and a larger facility in order to increase the size of the business.
The health care workers in the new facility will have the same qualifications as those employed by the government. The wage levels under consideration as released under FOI requests indicate that the workers will be paid at a level consistent with other health care workers in both the public and private sector throughout B.C., and our health care workers are very well paid. Accordingly, the residents will receive the same level of care by the same well qualified, well paid workers that are employed in government-run facilities.
The assertion that government-owned care facilities provide better care than those in the private sector is unfounded. The OECD and the Commonwealth Fund have consistently found that the government monopoly on hospitalized health care in Canada delivers a significantly lower quality of care than every other developed western country except the U.S. And they all have a healthy mix of public and private care facilities. We should not now extend our government monopoly model into the realm of long-term residential care.
Keith Maxwell, Sechelt
