Man calls for better long-term care after ‘nightmare’ experience

Jeff Nachtigall warned on Tuesday that no one should get sick or get old in Saskatchewan unless they have a lot of money socked away.

About six months ago, Nachtigall and his family started their journey around long-term care with their dad, Helmut – he’s 86 years old and has dementia.

“It’s not hyperbolic for me to state that this has been a nightmare,” he said.

The problems didn’t start in the home, Nachtigall said there were problems at the hospital in the respite and transitional care unit. They were given three options but were told the way the system works that he would have to go to the first bed that came up.

That bed ended up being at Pioneer Village in Regina. The facility has had a rocky go of it the last few years, with dozens of beds being closed and moved out of the facility because of mould issues.

Nachtigall said it wasn’t a positive environment for his dad.

“A lot of physical restraining, a lot of chemical restraints. And, as a family from the very beginning, asking, demanding that he not be snowed, but this was just an ongoing battle,” he explained.

He said he was shocked that type of thing still happened. When his father was physically restrained, Nachtigall said he would get agitated and try to get out of it, sometimes falling and getting hurt.

And the chemical restraints were another thing altogether.

“We saw dad go from somebody who could read, who could write, who could carry on a conversation, and one month later is slumped over in a chair, drooling,” Nachtigall said.

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Eventually, Nachtigall said he got a phone call from the home when he was out of province, telling him someone had to come and take his father to the hospital because he was hurt.

“After his toes were broken, that was the end of that story, it was time to pull him out and go elsewhere,” he said.

Helmut is now in a private care home and Nachtigall said he’s doing much better.

“He walks around the hallways now singing instead of avoiding certain rooms because he knew that there might be an aggressive or physical or violent confrontation with another resident,” he said.

However, the private home is expensive. Nachtigall said between both of his parents’ care the cost is about $10,000 a month. Helmut was a pastor so Nachtigall said his pension only goes so far.

“I’ve actually recently given up the paintbrush and started working in mines so that I can help out in that realm,” Nachtigall said.

With this experience – having to choose between substandard care and better care that Nachtigall called “unaffordable” – he said he’s realized how in crisis the system really is.

“It’s not going to get better on its own, the government needs to step in, it needs to help. This isn’t unique to my family, to my father, this is something that seems to be quite universal,” Nachtigall said.

He said there was some fantastic staff at Pioneer Village, but they were too few and far between. And Nachtigall said it seems to him that waiting lists are too long, the system it too difficult to navigate, and there just aren’t enough resources.

The Sask. NDP’s Keith Jorgenson brought Nachtigall to the legislative building on Tuesday to get a meeting with the Minister Responsible for Seniors Lori Carr. Jorgenson is the critic on that file.

“We continue to see the chaos in our long-term care system and lots and lots of people falling through the cracks, not being able to afford care for their families, and not being able to basically afford to age and die with dignity,” Jorgenson said.

He said the increased need for long-term care is possible to know.

“We can figure 5-10 years from now how many long-term care beds that we will need, yet this government does absolutely nothing to prepare for an aging population, and then we see … people that fall through the cracks and get hurt,” Jorgenson said.

The NDP claims standards in the long-term care system have been dropped for years, since the Sask. Party removed minimum standards of care for public special care home residents in 2011.

Minister Lori Carr met with Nachtigall on Tuesday, she said they had a really good meeting. She said the government and health authority will be looking into what happened to Helmut.

She said the provincial government is making investments throughout the province into long-term care, including a new 240-bed facility in Regina.