By Natalie Kaiman
The Ontario government last month began surprise inspections of the province’s long-term care facilities while it continued to stall on its promise to give them more money.
During his election campaign last year, Premier Dalton McGuinty pledged more than $420 million to improve the province’s long-term care facilities. While he reaffirmed his commitment to improve the facilities in a press release late last month, that pledge has yet to be met.
“We are taking action to deliver better care in our facilities,” said Health and Long-Term Care Minister George Smitherman in a statement of the new inspections.
The province says the inspectors will consult with facility residents, caregivers and administrators, and over the next several months will make recommendations on funding and improving care.
But the Ontario Association of Non-Profit Homes and Services for Seniors says the new inspections won’t solve the problem of widespread under-funding for their facilities.
The association continues to wait for the province to meet their funding pledges.
“We’ve been doing better with less for forever, but right now the rubber’s meeting the road,” says Salvation Army Maj. Charles Young, executive director of the Salvation Army Ottawa Grace Manor and a member of the non-profit homes association.
“We’re in a crisis situation where something has got to give,” he says.
Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care officials did not return phone calls seeking comment on the issue.
Young says long-term care residents are older, more frail and more needy because most come to facilities as their last option.
“The government does not seem to grasp the concept that…we’re living longer,” says Young. “The government is saying to us, ‘you’re still going to be funded as you were 10, 15 years ago.’”
Although he welcomes the province’s new inspections, Maj. Young says he laughed when he first read about them.
“Although we used to get a bit of notice, an inspector could technically have come in unannounced before.”
Young says the province’s move is likely in response to an incident late last year in Montreal, when orderlies at a long-term care facility were accused of verbal abuse and sexual harassment.
The surprise inspections are probably intended to raise public confidence in long-term care facilities, says Young.
“I’d love to have (the inspectors) come in here, see what we’re all about and be aware of the day-to-day issues,” he says, explaining that one of those issues is that facilities in Ontario must feed residents on $5.24 each per day.
“That’ll blow you away… could you feed yourself with that?”
In addition, Ontario provides long-term care residents just two hours of nursing and personal care a day. At Grace Manor, for example, there is just one registered nurse to assist the facility’s 128 residents.
Other long-term care administrators hope the provincial inspectors will find fault with provincial funding rather than with their procedures.
“All they would find is that the dollars just are not there to get enough staff…there is a crisis coming,” says Dawn O’Leary, director of the Glebe Centre Inc., another long-term care facility in Centretown.
Even if the province did meet its promises, the new funding would only put Ontario where other regions already stand, says Donna Rubin, a representative from an association of non-profit homes.
“We have been nickel and dimed for so long that even $420 million a year would only bring us into line with the average in other jurisdictions.”
Rubin says the provincial government is committed to making lasting changes — but it’s a matter of when that’s important.
“If we received from government what they had promised, we will be able to provide what we believe to be the real quality of care these residents deserve,” says Young.
“Let’s face it, we’re all going down the same river.”