Honour LTC operators who practise wellness model: Fraser
Thursday, September 22, 2005 -- Craig Anderson
As the face of long-term care is literally changing with the addition of people who have few community or health care options, it’s important the Province acknowledge this and provide practical support as it restructures the health care system, says Fraser Wilson, CEO of OMNI.

Numerous examples abound in recent years of long-term care homes providing services for people who cannot find residency, and in a majority of cases, suitable rehabilitation or care to meet their specific needs - recovering alcoholics, people with intellectual disabilities, or those with other mitigating health factors like brain injuries.

“I see incredible opportunities for long-term care with the incoming (Local Health Integrated Network) structure," says Fraser.

"But what I would also love to see is the Province address the wellness aspect. As far as I am concerned when it comes to government ‘wellness’ is still just a concept and not a practice. Their systems lack the insight to reward those things that give people quality of life," he adds.

As an example, Fraser raises the issue of the recent lift funding initiative. Ceiling lifts, says Fraser, represent the old institutional ethic that long- term care and the Ministry are ostensibly moving away from. Along with psychotropic medications, which are also readily funded by the Ministry, a “perverse funding” arrangement has developed, contravening the Ministry’s stated move towards a more preventative, holistic long-term care approach, he says.

“Ceiling lifts are about keeping people in their beds – it’s not about getting them socially integrated, getting them mobile, getting their blood flowing, going into social situations – feeding the body, feeding the spirit. This is what long-term care can do for people that currently does not happen in hospitals,” he says.

Fraser says that funds should be more appropriately channeled to honour those organizations that have put the wellness model into practice. In OMNI homes, reducing the use of psychotropic drugs, eliminating restraints, behavioural therapy like supportive measures and an emphasis on activity and physical fitness are, says Fraser, an example of the “greater breadth of scope” of treatment possible in long-term care homes. Residents who are not elderly but find long-term care the appropriate fit, even if temporarily, are notable because despite minimal resources radical successes have been had with the wellness approach.

“We’ve truly given people their lives back,” says Fraser. (see links: Man stays sober, gives to others in long term care home, and Riverview offers better life for woman with brain injury.

“I would hope on a provincial basis the government will stand up and listen to what we can do.”

Fraser suggests making long-term care homes more readily able to provide health care appropriate to its residents, such as dialysis, mobile X-rays, IV therapy, and in-home ABG blood oxygen testing. All too frequently, residents, especially those with dementia, are brought out of the home in ambulances to a hospital setting - a traumatic experience.

The 'Healthy Living Healthy Skin' wound care program is an example of a pioneering spirit, says Fraser, undertaken with minimal resources and designed specifically for the clinical challenges unique to long-term care but also beneficial to the wider medical community.

“What would we be capable of if we were appropriately funded?” he asks.