"All I Want Is A Bath"

He's 70 years of age, long retired from the public service.  He has no family, only himself.  And he has had fairly poor health outcomes requiring surgery.  He spent two years in hospital and is now confined to a motorized, battery-operated wheelchair to get around.  And he manages to get around fairly well, in fact.  He lives in his own apartment, and manages to do many of the things that others do.

He is capable of mopping his apartment floor from his wheelchair.  He does his laundry, makes his meals, and gets about on his wheelchair.  On occasion he uses OC Transpo to get around the city.  "I'm able to do things.  I've got my mind.  I'm not young anymore, but I'm not hopeless", he tells a reporter, doing a story about him.

He suffered an aneurysm in 2009 and complications during surgery resulted in paralysis of his right leg.  He spent two years at Saint-Vincent Hospital and he was treated there for kidney problems.  His paralysed leg complicates life for him, obviously.  He cannot, safely, get in and out of a bathtub, for example.  It's dangerous, he could fall and hurt himself seriously. 

It would cost OHIP from $25 to $30 for a personal support worker to come to Northgrave's home for an hour, and to assist him to bathe.

So he needs assistance for those times when he would like to take a bath.  In the meantime, lacking that assistance, he sponge-baths himself regularly.  But Mike Northgrave really would appreciate being able to bathe properly.  In a bathtub, without fear of harming himself.  So he turned to the Champlain Community Care Access Centre which coordinates in-home health care, support and rehabilitation.

The CCAC has roughly eighteen thousand clients monthly, across a large part of eastern Ontario.  And it claims its resources are too thin to include Mike Northgrave's needs.  They've assessed his needs and found them wanting in the sense that he doesn't represent a priority.  There is just so much that can be done with a finite amount of funding, and that doesn't include aiding Mike Northgrave in his search for monthly help.

The $197-million budget enabled the CCAC to provide 2.1-million hours of support last year.  "When you hear this gentleman's story, it doesn't sound as if he's a lower-needs client" explained Kim Peterson, the vice-president of client services with the CCAC.  "But you have to remember that we take on people who are at the end of life, dying, children with multiple medical needs.

"So in the range of people we serve, he is on the lower range (of acute or complex need).  If there is an immediate imminent risk, we make an exception, but it sounds as if he's managing quite well.  Although sponge bathing is limiting for him, it doesn't put him at high risk."  But Mike Northgrave feels he is being ill-served.

He claims to know people who receive 15 hours of home-care help weekly from the CCAC.  He feels they could do with less.  Some of those clients, according to Mr. Northgrave, are on government assistance and live in subsidized homes.  All he wants is one hour a week of help to enable him finally to take a bath in his own apartment.

As a former public servant, Mr. Northgrave has a good pension.  He doesn't want for financial stability, unlike many of the CCAC clients who have very little.  He could easily afford the nominal fee charged by private home-care providers, about $25 and up for each hour.  He wants someone qualified to come in to his apartment and spend an hour with him, helping him to take a bath once a week.

But he refuses to spring for the $25 with his own money to enable that to happen.  He insists he is entitled to have the CCAC with its client load and its stretched budget, include his personal need on their roster, despite the steady increase they have experienced with people needing their services.

Enter his health insurer - thanks again to his former public service job - offering to pay for a bathtub chair lift.  Once again, the taxpayer comes to the rescue.