Manitoba personal care homes secure air quality funds, seek election platform

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This article was published 19/05/2023 (882 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s long-term care sector deserves a spot in the provincial election spotlight, as nursing homes struggle with frozen operating grants and rising costs post-pandemic, personal care home operators say.

“It absolutely needs to be an election issue,” Saul and Claribel Simkin Centre chief executive officer Laurie Cerqueti said Friday. “We’ve been underfunded for years.”

The provincial government announced the 200-bed personal care home in the Winnipeg neighbourhood of Linden Ridge would receive $90,000 to replace its kitchen condenser unit via the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program’s COVID-19 resilience stream.

The Simkin Centre was one of 32 Manitoba personal care homes, schools and hospitals to receive cash for projects to improve ventilation and air quality as part of a $13.1-million funding announcement, the majority of which was federal money.

Cerqueti, who serves on the board of Manitoba Association of Residential and Community Care Home for the Elderly, said receiving the one-time grant to improve infrastructure is wonderful, but bills are piling up for care home operators who have a long list of capital needs.

“It’s great the government is finally starting to work on some of these items,” she said, noting the Simkin Centre recently forked out more than $200,000 to upgrade its access and security system.

The parking lot and roof are also in need of attention, she said, describing the financial pressures of maintenance and capital improvements as “never ending.”

“There’s lots of things on our wish list, absolutely, as there is with any other personal care home,” she said.

At the same time, operators have been constrained by stagnant operating grants for more than a decade that have failed to keep pace with the needs, according to long-term care associations.

Deadly COVID-19 outbreaks and severe staffing shortages at care homes have prompted the provincial government to provide funds for infection prevention and control and increase spending to add more nurses and health-care aides based on 17 recommendations in the Stevenson report.

Lynn Stevenson, a former B.C. associate deputy minister, was hired to investigate the deadly COVID-19 outbreak at Maples care home in Winnipeg in fall 2020, in which 56 people died.

The Progressive Conservative government has committed to following through on all recommendations, including a review of PCH funding.

Cerqueti said provincial money given to hire staff has improved the care offered at homes and bolstered infection control, but more can be done.

“It’s wonderful that the Stevenson report is moving forward and adding stuff, but there’s all of the operations that we need money for, as well,” Cerqueti said.

“Things keep going up, whether it’s food, property taxes, utilities, anything we have to fix in this building, so it is difficult,” she said, adding the federal government’s price on carbon has also increased the home’s expenses.

Government Services Minister James Teitsma and Labour Minister Jon Reyes announced the grants Friday. The Manitoba government contributed $2.6 million to the projects.

“The projects will ensure the environments in which students, residents, teachers, health-care professionals and other staff spend the majority of their days are healthy, inviting and comfortable,” Teitsma said.

“In completing these critical repairs and improvements to public facilities, this funding will also keep Manitobans on the road to recovery as we together emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Money is also being provided to St. Boniface Hospital, Thompson General Hospital, Stonewall Collegiate, Cadham Provincial Laboratory, and Health Sciences Centre, which will receive over $4 million.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca