Care homes and hospice houses throughout the B.C. Interior have received a national grant to strengthen their pandemic responses in the future.
The national LTC+ Acting on Pandemic Learning Together program is being delivered by Healthcare Excellence Canada, an independent not-for-profit funded by Health Canada.
Long-term care, assisted living homes and hospice houses applied and joined the national initiative, receiving $700,000 in support to document and share lessons learned from delivering care during COVID-19 and the goal of being better prepared in the future.
“I would like to thank Healthcare Excellence Canada for launching the LTC+ program and for the generous financial support towards seniors care throughout the Interior,” said Interior Health president and CEO Susan Brown.
“The people who live, work and visit care homes and hospice houses know firsthand the massive impact this pandemic has had on residents’ quality of care and the stress it has put on families and staff. This special support will go a long way in capturing the lessons learned from this pandemic to prevent future challenges in the future.”
The funding will go towards supporting the 70 care homes in strengthening their pandemic responses in six key areas of practice: readiness, prevention, people in the workforce, surge capacity, care planning and the presence of family.
“The pandemic has emphasized the importance of working collaboratively. When we work together, we can achieve so much more,” said Tanya MacDonald, director of innovations and strategic development at Healthcare Excellence Canada.
“LTC+ is a true partnership with organizations such as BC Patient Safety and Quality Council and the homes that are participating. We are working with each other, not for each other.”
Interior Health said there were 18 COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care homes, and two in assisted living facilities, from March 2020-March 2021.
Sixty-two residents died of COVID-19. No outbreaks were declared in hospice houses.
B.C.’s seniors advocate, Isobel Mackenzie, is working on a larger review of COVID-19 outbreaks in care homes, which she hopes to publish in July.
She said of about 500 sites in B.C., 212 had outbreaks.
Of the sites that had outbreaks, most were contained to staff or a couple of residents. Therefore, her office plans to look at 25 or so of the worst outbreaks to understand what went wrong.
The age and size of the buildings, whether residents had shared rooms or shared baths, staffing levels, sick-leave policies, infection control practices, and the age and conditions of residents could all be factors, Mackenzie said.
Her office will also undertake a survey of care home staff in B.C. that will hopefully give insight into the training they received, she said.
Mackenzie said she expects the provincial government will face pressure from the public to implement her upcoming recommendations.
“One of the things that’s been very heartening has been that the public is very much getting behind the issue of improvements to long-term care,” she said.
“They now see what can happen, what does happen and they’ve said, ‘We need to do better. We need to make improvements.’ So, I think people will be listening and they will expect their governments to act.”
—With files from The Canadian Press
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