A new report from the Ontario Health Coalition titled ‘Situation Critical,’ outlines issues of access, planning, levels of care and violence in long-term care homes across the province.
At a press conference in Barrie Friday morning, Secretary-Treasurer of the Ontario Federation of Labour and member of the Ontario Health Coalition Board, Patty Coates, outlined the findings of the report.
The report found that planning, levels of care, regulation, and resourcing of long-term care have not kept pace with the needs of the provinces aging population.
The report also says Ontario’s long-term care homes have “extraordinary” levels of occupancy and acuity, and access to care is inadequate.
The Ontario Health Coalition found that as a result, violence in long-term care facilities is escalating.
Information included in the report from the Ontario Coroner claims there were 27 alleged resident-on-resident homicides between 2012 and 2016.
“What the health coalition found is shocking and frankly unacceptable,” Coates said. “If the care for the frail and the most vulnerable among us is a measure of our humanity and our compassion then we have failed.”
“Our hope is that this report will serve as a wake-up call that can no longer be ignored,” she said.
Kerry Doyle is a registered practical nurse (RPN) at the Coleman Care Centre in Barrie. She has spent the last 20 years working in the health-care field and knows first-hand the difficulties front-line workers in long-term care facilities face on a daily basis.
She says one of the largest issues is understaffing.
“On the best of days, the staff to resident ratio is a crisis,” she said.
At the Coleman Care Centre, Doyle says the average ratio is one personal support worker to 10 or 12 residents.
She says the staff ratio for RPNs is one to 40 or 45 seniors.
As a result, Doyle says residents who thrive on one-on-one care are not receiving the basic quality of care that they require.
“This results in increased behavioural symptoms, decreased mental stability and as the dominoes fall, decreased mental stability and aggression result in staff as well as other residents at times being physically and verbally assaulted,” she said.
Doyle says a lack of education for front-line workers on how to deal with behavioural symptoms also poses a large problem for both workers and residents.
“These are our parents, our grandparents,” Doyle said. “The staff that work the front lines are our sisters, our brothers, our family members, and we want the best for them and our province is failing them at epic levels.”
And according to Doyle, mentally and physically taxing workloads and increasing responsibilities in combination with lack of full-time employment opportunities and low wages make pursuing a career in the field unattractive to students.
“This is a very scary concept because as the population ages and as the age increases you need to provide more care and there aren’t going to be enough staff to provide those roles and to do those roles,” Doyle said.
Included in the report are four recommendations the Ontario Health Coalition has proposed to address the ongoing issues.
The health coalition says residents should receive on average four hours per day of hands-on direct nursing and personal support as a minimum care standard.
They say a plan should be developed and implemented to increase the number of long-term care beds in public and non-profit homes.
The report also calls for a stop to public hospital downsizing and the report says hospital capacity should be restored and rebuilt to meet population needs.
The report also recommends stopping the offloading of complex patients into long-term care.
Lastly, the health coalition recommends each long-term care home should be resourced with trained, in-house Behavioural Support Ontario (BSO) teams.