Frustrated families are turning to private providers for help because of cuts to government-funded in-home care for older people.
New Zealand's largest in-home senior care provider, Home Instead Senior Care, says hits on the company's website have more than doubled in recent months and they are fielding hundreds of requests from families seeking help for their older relatives.
Chief executive Neil Farnworth said with cuts to District Health Board budgets families have told them their relatives are getting less than two hours of help or no help at all.
"They say this is inadequate and, in some cases, may be endangering older people," said Farnworth.
DHB-funded home help usually extends to basic cleaning and showering services, but doesn't provide for companionship, shopping, help with finances and medication, preparing meals, driving to appointments and other assistance around the home.
Farnworth said most seniors prefer to stay in their own homes for as long as possible and with a little help and companionship can generally maintain their independence, quality of life and positive mental health.
"That regular chat with a carer is just as important as doing the vacuuming or dusting."
Fivefingers kso Fivefingers Classic Fivefingers Perfoma Fivefingers Sprint Five Fingers Speed Five Fingers Bikila Fivefingers kso Women shoes Gray purpleThe wake is over, the chase is on. Arsene Wenger believes Arsenal have finally stopped mourning their demise in the Carling Cup, FA Cup and Champions League and can catch Manchester United in the Premier League.
But, rather like the builder contracted to do the scaffolding on the Blackpool Tower, it remains a tall order. Still, this was Arsenal's first win in six during a harrowing period when they have slumped out of those three competitions.
"It was a massive disappointment," reflected Wenger. "We go through a period of grief and denial and then you have to start showing the mental strength to respond. This team has done that remarkably well. There are still seven games."
Hardly easy ones, though. Now seven points behind with a game in hand, Arsenal's next three fixtures are at home to Liverpool before tricky trips to Tottenham Hotspur and Bolton Wanderers. United could conceivably clinch the title at the Emirates on May 1.
As Arsenal peer upwards, Blackpool glance nervously over their shoulders. "It's the toughest league," said Ian Holloway, whose team lie only a point above the relegation zone. "I feel like a gladiator going into an arena with a toothpick. I want to chop down a tree and make a lance.
"I revere these people. This is Wenger. I watched them. I wanted to be up against them. I am now up against them. I'm Blackpool. It's a joy. But I want to stay in this level."
Invariably animated, Holloway was particularly aggrieved by Lee Mason's failure to award Blackpool penalties for a handball by Abou Diaby and particularly a challenge by Laurent Koscielny on Gary Taylor-Fletcher.
"I went to see Mr Mason afterwards and he said he'd given us penalties earlier in the season," said Holloway. "He gave us one at Newcastle. But there was a handball. There was a foul on Taylor-Fletcher. That could have made a huge, huge, huge difference to our season."
Arsenal were deserved winners overall, although they had to negotiate some awkward moments on a balmy day. When Manuel Almunia tweaked his knee in the warm-up, forcing him to retreat to the dug-out with an ice-pack on his knee, Jens Lehmann started.
"Sometimes life is about surprises, and that happened to me," said Lehmann of his chance to make it 200 appearances for Arsenal.
If he features against Liverpool, the German will become Arsenal's oldest player, eclipsing Jock Rutherford, the winger aged 41 years and 159 days against Manchester City in 1926.
Lehmann had little to do in the first half and the thought occurred that Arsenal could have brought Bob Wilson back. The Gunners soon took control, helped by Blackpool's seemingly scant understanding of offside and failure to stick tight to Cesc Fabregas, outstanding on his 300th club appearance.
When Diaby nicked the ball after 18 minutes, Fabregas took charge, sweeping a pass left to Robin van Persie and Diaby applied the finishing touch to the Dutchman's cross.
Like the local hostelries, Blackpool's defence clearly offered a two-for-one deal and Arsenal swiftly helped themselves to a second. Emmanuel Eboue exchanged passes with Jack Wilshere before shooting powerfully home.
Blackpool were a different force after the break, clearly stirred by Holloway's words and halving the deficit within seven minutes.
Advantage
Following a foul by Wilshere, Mason played good advantage as Blackpool were racing upfield. Jason Puncheon squeezed the ball through for DJ Campbell, whose journey was ended by Lehmann's challenge, but Taylor-Fletcher slammed the loose ball in.
Yet if Mason had punished Lehmann, then Blackpool would have fancied their chances with Charlie Adam so adept from the spot, against 10 men and with no back-up 'keeper on the bench.
Blackpool kept going and Keith Southern wasted a simple chance, heading wide.
Arsenal woke up really only when Theo Walcott arrived. Found brilliantly by Fabregas' volleyed pass, Walcott raced down the right and squared to Van Persie to end Blackpool's hopes of a comeback. Arsenal's hopes of catching United remain alive, but only just. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
Vibram Fivefingers Me Fivefingers Classic Fivefingers Flow Fivefingers Kso Fivefingers Kso Trek Fivefingers Kso ZipperUniversity Health Network plans to join forces with a rehabilitation institute to help free up beds in Toronto’s largest hospitals, part of an emerging trend as the health-care sector copes with limited financial resources and growing demand.
Toronto Rehabilitation Institute treats patients from Toronto’s largest hospitals, including the three that comprise the University Health Network – St. Michael’s, Mount Sinai and Sunnybrook. Integrating its services will help all of the hospitals move patients more seamlessly and quickly out of their beds and into rehab, said UHN chief executive officer Robert Bell.
“Let’s face it,” he said in an interview. “We know that once you are inside various elements of the Ontario hospital system, you get looked after very well. But the transitions that occur between the domains of the system are very troubling for patients.”
At UHN alone, 50 to 70 patients are waiting for rehab services at any one time, Dr. Bell said. Discharging them more quickly from the hospitals will help ease the bottleneck of patients in emergency departments waiting to get admitted.
UHN is not alone in looking for ways to improve patient care as the province’s 154 hospitals cope with a higher volume of patients from an aging, growing population and as funding fails to keep pace with rising costs.
Two Greater Toronto Area hospitals announced on Thursday that they plan to merge to create a single entity serving the one million residents of Mississauga and West Toronto. Officials at Trillium Health Centre and Credit Valley Hospital say they can provide patients with better quality care by merging. The savings from lower administration costs, including one CEO instead of two, will be invested in front-line services. The population is projected to grow about 20 per cent in the region this decade, they said, placing enormous pressure on health-care providers.
Hospital consolidations are not new in Ontario. Many were merged in the 1990s as part of the Harris government’s massive restructuring of the province’s health-care system. The difference this time around, however, is that hospital executives are the ones initiating the mergers.
A voluntary merger has a far better chance of succeeding, because the people most affected have a say in it, said Janet Davidson, chief executive officer of Trillium. She worked in Alberta in the 1990s when the government merged health-care operators in that province.
“When people feel they have some control over their own destiny in designing it, they take much more ownership of it,” Ms. Davidson said in an interview.
Trillium is itself the product of a merger, but it is widely viewed as one of the more successful ones orchestrated by the Harris government. Trillium has a 714-bed hospital in Mississauga and an out-patient clinic in West Toronto, the former Queensway Hospital.
Credit Valley operates a 382-bed hospital in Mississauga. The two hospitals provide complementary programs, with Trillium focusing on treating heart disease and Credit Valley on cancer.
kobe shoes,basketball shoes, nike shoes crazy 8 kobes shoes Hyperdunk shoes Hyperfuse XDR Zoom kobeHealth investigators were trying to determine whether bacteria found in a laboratory of a company that supplied contaminated intravenous feeding bags matched organisms linked to an infection outbreak in six Alabama hospitals where nine people died after receiving the liquid nutrients, officials said Monday.
Officials checking for signs of contamination at pharmaceutical supplier Meds IV found Serratia marcescens on a faucet and a mixing area in the business, said Dr. Donald Williamson, director of the Alabama Department of Public Health. The same kind of bacteria was found in feeding bags made by Meds IV and given to patients in the hospitals, he said.
But such bacteria are common, Williamson said, and only test results expected Tuesday will show whether the organisms found in the Meds IV lab were linked to those found in the company's product. The tests are "basically like fingerprints," Williamson said.
Williamson said investigators might never know whether infections linked to the tainted feeding liquid caused the deaths and illnesses, but several families already have filed lawsuits blaming Meds IV for what happened to their loved ones.
Attorneys for relatives of Lunna Powell, who died at Princeton Baptist Medical Center on March 5, filed a wrongful death lawsuit blaming Meds IV and company officials for her death.
"By supplying the hospital with IV fluids tainted with deadly bacteria, Meds IV endangered the lives of patients, and in the case of Ms. Powell, they caused her death and they must be held accountable," Leila Watson, a lawyer for the family, said in a statement.
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