Home-care sector requires overhaul

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This article was published 02/08/2021 (1589 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Reluctance. Fear. Dread.

When those are the emotions that underpin consideration of a significant life choice, it’s an obvious signal that the available options do not meet the needs of the individual facing the decision.

And yet these are the reactions of many Canadians when surveyed about the current state of long-term elder care and the prospect of being placed, or having a loved one placed, in a care home in this country.

Nearly half (47 per cent) of the respondents to an Angus Reid survey, whose results were released last week, said they would do everything in their power to avoid having themselves or a relative/loved one placed in a long-term care home. And nearly as many (44 per cent) said they “dread” the thought of living in long-term care.

The numbers are alarming, but hardly surprising given the carnage that occurred in Canada’s long-term care sector during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to figures released last spring by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), Canada had the worst record for COVID-19 deaths in care homes among developed countries, with fatalities in nursing and long-term care facilities accounting for 69 per cent of all pandemic deaths (the international average was 41 per cent).

One need only recall the horrors that unfolded at the Maples Personal Care Home in October/November 2020, when an outbreak of COVID-19 in the woefully understaffed facility led to 56 deaths. What happened there, as well as in numerous care homes throughout the province and across Canada, raised serious questions about how such facilities — particularly those of the privately owned, for-profit variety — are staffed, managed and regulated.

The results of the Angus Reid survey confirm that satisfactory answers have not yet been provided.

Seventy-six per cent of the 1,500 Canadians surveyed last March said the long-term care sector is in need of an overhaul, or at least significant changes. In Manitoba, 73 per cent shared that view, and 60 per cent believe the federal government should be directly involved in setting standards for the care-home industry.

In terms of specific changes, 43 per cent of the national survey respondents said more inspections and greater enforcement of standards are necessary, while 39 per cent recommended increasing the number of staff required to be on duty in care homes. And 55 per cent of respondents said they’d be willing to accept a tax increase to fund the necessary improvements.

Lamentably, only 30 per cent believe the required changes will be made. And therein, perhaps, lies the challenge for legislators at the federal and provincial levels: owing largely to the massive inadequacies exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic’s ravages, the public has lost confidence in a sector that will play an increasingly crucial role in Canadians’ lives as a large segment of the population continues to age.

While the oft-repeated call for seniors’ care to be wrested from the clutches of the for-profit sector and absorbed into the broader public-health system are a fiscal and logistical impracticality that cannot and will not be pursued, it is incumbent on governments to create, implement and rigidly enforce a regulatory framework that ensures the entirely preventable tragedies of the past 18 months are not repeated.

Aging Canadians will inevitably require care. Accessing it should not be a source of fear and dread.