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Health coalition demands answers on why home-care patients left short of vital supplies for weeks
Posted: November 1, 2024
(November 1, 2024) by: Joanna Frketich (Hamilton Spectator)
The president of a medical supply company went out on deliveries in Hamilton and Niagara last weekend to talk to home-care patients about a provincewide crisis that has left them without vital medical provisions.
Bayshore HealthCare confirmed that founder Stuart Cottrelle personally delivered supplies to patients in Hamilton on Oct. 26 and in Niagara on Oct. 27.
The visits come as doctors, care workers and patients have described utter chaos since the province changed what supplies are available to order on Sept. 24, as well as the contracts to procure the provisions, fulfil the requests and deliver them.
The province has not explained why the changes instantly plunged home care into desperate ongoing shortages of supplies needed to care for some of Ontario’s most vulnerable patients including those with cancer, diabetics, babies, people on life support and the dying.
“It’s shocking,” said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. “The supplies are out there. Emergency departments are getting them. Pharmacies have them.”
Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday that his government is “fixing the problem” and he’s “holding people accountable.”
However, the offices of the premier and Health Minister Sylvia Jones refused to answer questions about who is accountable, what is being done to fix the shortages and why they have gone on for more than one month.
“Those are fair questions, and they should be answered,” said Mehra. “The public has the right to know — this is public money and there should be public accountability.”
Mehra said the former system was working well with the Ontario Health Coalition rarely getting complaints about the availability and quality of home-care supplies.
“We got mostly people complaining that they deliver too much stuff and there’s a lot of waste,” said Mehra. “Supplies not showing up or not being available — including vital, urgent supplies — I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a complaint like that in my 27 years of doing this.”
Now the coalition is hearing from patients like Penny Moore, who says she ended up in the emergency room with an infection because of missing and poor-quality supplies.
The 61-year-old from London requires a medical device known as a Foley catheter to drain urine from the bladder into a collection bag because of medical issues. For nearly nine years, Moore said she had no issue getting the supplies she needed to manage the catheter at home.
After the changes in September, Moore said some essential supplies were missing from the order and the ones she got were vastly different from what she had before.
“They’re cheaper,” Moore said. “They’re thinner. The tubing is one quarter the size of tubing that normally is on a catheter bag.”
As a result, Moore said the urine did not drain properly through the small tube.
“I was in so much pain,” Moore said. “I felt like I was in labour having a baby and I couldn’t even get out of bed. I couldn’t walk.”
She sought help at a an emergency department where she says she was diagnosed with an infection, given antibiotics and had her Foley catheter changed to one that is higher quality.
Moore doesn’t know what to do when the bag needs to be changed in about a week. She says she’s received no help from the emergency number Ontario Health atHome set up for patients at 1-866-377-7567. Her care nurse has been trying to get better quality supplies to no avail, she says.
“It scares me and frustrates me,” said Moore. “I always worry about getting another infection.”
A Hamilton home-care nurse also expressed concern about the quality of some supplies this week. The Spectator is not naming the nurse because they are not authorized by their employer to speak.
The nurse described having to dress a bacterial skin infection like a “patchwork quilt,” piecing together small absorbent pads with tape because the large, thick and super absorbent roll of padding that is normally used wasn’t sent.
It’s not clear who is responsible for the alleged changes in the quality of the supplies.
Sources say the formulary that lists what is available to order for home-care patients was overhauled in September. It’s unclear who made the changes, but Ontario Health atHome is the provincial agency that co-ordinates in-home and community-based care for over 650,000 Ontario patients a year. It is a subsidiary of the province’s superagency Ontario Health.
At the same time, new contracts started for procurement of supplies and fulfilment of the orders that gave a small number of companies responsibility for large parts of the province.
Orders in Hamilton, Niagara, Haldimand and Brant are filled by Bayshore Specialty Rx for supplies and Calea for infusion medicine. However, neither of the companies procure the items they deliver. Procurement is a separate contract.
Ontario Health atHome has not answered questions about the changes or the resulting shortages.
“We are doing everything we can to address this situation,” Ontario Health atHome said in a statement on Oct. 22
