Ontario misses interim target to provide hands-on care to long-term care residents – Winnipeg Free Press

TORONTO – Ontario fell short of its own regulatory target last year for the average number of hands-on care hours long-term care residents received, a newly updated document shows.

The province has since said it has met its 2023-24 fiscal year goal, but that was outside the timeframe the Progressive Conservative government set in the 2021 law.

The government says it is continuing to work towards its next target of ensuring residents receive four hours a day of direct care from nurses and personal support workers by the end of the current financial year next March.

The interim targets of the first and second years were achieved, but as of March 31 this year, the target of three hours and 42 minutes was missed.

This fall, officials added that information to the bottom of the 2020 staffing plan posted on the Ontario government’s website without saying anything publicly; This has led opposition critics to rail against transparency.

The updated version of the report says Ontario “exceeded” its direct care hours target in the first quarter of fiscal year 2024-25 compared to the previous year.

“In total, the province has provided more than an additional hour of direct care to Ontario’s long-term care residents through this government’s unprecedented investments. “This represents a 33 percent increase in direct care since 2021.”

A document previously obtained by The Canadian Press through a freedom of information request shows bureaucrats warned the long-term care minister’s predecessor about the risk of missing targets nearly a year ago.

When then-minister Stan Cho took over the file, the document shows officials told him that staffing shortages might mean Ontario could not meet its direct care hours commitment.

The document states that 13,200 additional nurses and 37,700 personal support workers are needed in Ontario by this year.

The situation has not changed much since current Minister Natalia Kusendova-Bashta took over the file in June.

Ricardo McKenzie, director of long-term care for SEIU Healthcare, a union that represents long-term care workers, including personal care workers, said the issue of increasing direct care hours for long-term care residents won’t be resolved until staffing shortages are addressed. support workers and registered practical nurses.

And the problem of staffing shortages won’t be solved until workers have stable, well-paying jobs, he said.

“We believe the solution is to provide workers with full-time jobs, middle-class wages, strong benefits and retirement security,” McKenzie said.

“Until the government and employers do this, the situation with staff turnover will only get worse.”

Government figures show attrition among personal support workers is as high as 25 per cent, meaning a quarter of the profession leaves each year.

McKenzie said union data shows annual turnover in long-term care homes is as high as 38 percent.

Even if average hours of care targets are met, he said, it raises the question of the quality of care residents receive.

“The question is: Is four hours of care a magic number, or should we be looking at the quality of care?” he said.

“Instead of residents getting to know their caregivers and building a relationship with their caregivers, they can’t because this is the new face they see on a regular basis.”

Hospitals and long-term care homes are spending large amounts of money on staffing agencies to temporarily fill nursing and personal support staff shifts — nearly $1 billion in 2022-23.

Lisa Levin, CEO of AdvantAge Ontario, which represents not-for-profit long-term care homes in the province, said agency staff are critical to the functioning of homes, but they cost much more than regular staff.

That means long-term care homes spend more money to achieve the same level of care, he said.

One solution suggested by Levin and other public health organizations is for the government to equalize wages across the healthcare system as a whole.

“If you’re doing a similar job in the community and not in a hospital or education, you should be getting similar wages, and that’s not happening,” he said.

“So people will find jobs in community health, including long-term care, and then quickly leave when they find a better, higher-paying job somewhere else.”

Long-term care homes often feel this trend most acutely among registered practical nurses who supervise personal support workers.

But Levin said the government’s $3-per-hour wage increase for personal support workers working in long-term care during the pandemic resulted in registered practical nurses earning the same or less.

“This has led to an absolute exodus of RPNs from long-term care and it is very, very difficult to get them back and continue working in the industry,” he said.

The government’s legislation on direct care hours requires it to publicly report its progress and, if a target has not been met, it must identify the reasons why and recommended steps to achieve that target.