Shadow Health Minister Louise Jackson has launched a scathing attack on the standard of day care provided for seniors at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, claiming incontinent people are not changed often enough.

Speaking during the debate on Wednesday evening about new regulations that will increase hospital fees by six percent from April 1, Mrs. Jackson said patients would not get value for money.

Highlighting that geriatric day care will be charged at $65 per day under the new fee regulations, Mrs. Jackson said: ?The day care costs less in most of the private homes but they provide more. At our geriatric day care in KEMH they (the clients) only get one meal as opposed to two at the other homes. They also sit on hard chairs all day. Picture someone old and sick having to sit in a wheelchair or hard chair until 5 p.m. when someone picks them up to take them home.

?For those who are paying $65 a day ? that?s $1,950 a month ? there?s not a bed for them to lie on. Every other rest home I know has a cot if people want to lie down.?

Moving on to what she described as ?a delicate matter,? Mrs. Jackson added: ?Many of these people are incontinent and they have to be changed. They are only changed once a day in this facility and the pads are not provided ? you have to send them there with the person despite paying $65 per day. The people I know who use it send two or three pads and two come back, showing they have not been used.?

She accused the Ministry of Health of having ?a lack of direction? and said that many people in Bermuda who cannot afford to pay for their private health insurance ?are just praying that they don?t have to go into that hospital?.

Responding to these remarks, said that if other care facilities charge less, it would be helpful to know what the difference in price was.

She said the hospital provided a wealth of in-patient and out-patient services, and deserves to be supported. She added that the Hospitals Board had given Mrs. Jackson tours of the facility that left her pleased with the attention given to the issues she has raised in the past.