What happens when nursing homes are FULL with a broken healthcare system?
The healthcare system is suffering under the strain of COVID, understaffing, burnt out workers. It’s seems like the healthcare system is severely stricken. It's not just the US. It's burdened in Canada. I keep telling my friends and family to not get sick or break a bone. We have no staff, burnt out and the government seems like they have no clue what to do anymore. This problem isn’t going away if/when COVID dissipates, either. Long COVID will add to the strain, as will our rapidly aging population. Do you realize that we’re going to have literally nowhere to place the many, many baby boomers who will develop dementia and will require LTC placement in the 2030s and ‘40s? There’s no sense of urgency on display from the government, no great push to build more LTC homes and invest in training the large number of workers we need to staff these homes.
13.8% of people age 75+ have some form of dementia. There are some 76 million boomers across the US. Statistically speaking, when they turn some version of 75+. 10,543,200, that means TEN MILLION and FIVE HUNDRED FORTY THREE MILLION! People with rotten brains are gonna start shitting their pants and dying en mass.
Do you even realize how much of the nursing industry will collapse under that weight if management is not taken of? Right now, there are only 581,140 nursing assistants who are community psychiatric nurses, that’s means they work in care homes. Now I pulled that off of google, but if we’re taking that number and mixing it in with the demented boomers, then that’s a ratio of 18 patients per person. And if we’re the resignation, the burning out, the LONG COVID strain. That P/W ratio could very well go up to 30+ with Gen x and boomers.
All I’m saying, is that the US and other western countries need to get their shit together. Do you know how many nursing staff and doctors are just screaming for patients right now? There’s not gonna be any time to care of old Joe here with his shit-bag. Boomers and demented people will literally die off en mass at a pace far greater than what we’re seeing now.
This is why I think management of the health care system needs to be yanked out of the provinces/territories’ hands and be managed by the federal government. Their mismanagement of the healthcare portfolio spans decades and had it been closely monitored by the federal government, then maybe we wouldn’t be in the predicament we’re in…maybe.