No funding for hands-on nursing home care

Premier’s vow to boost LTC services would require hiring thousands

There’s no money earmarked in Ontario’s first pandemic budget for Premier Doug Ford’s recent promise to provide four hours of hands-on care to nursing home residents, which will require hiring thousands of nurses and personal support workers.

Officials said more details will come after a staffing strategy is released in December and a plan is developed with targets to be reached in stages by 2025 to improve care that now averages 2.75 hours daily amid a staffing crisis made worse by the pressures of COVID-19.

“The challenges of finally fixing our long-term-care system are complex and will require partnerships with labour, homes and training providers to recruit and train tens of thousands of new staff over the next four years,” said Finance Minister Rod Phillips, who set aside millions more for hospitals in his $187-billion spending blueprint.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said it’s hard to believe the government will make good on what Phillips acknowledged is an “ambitious” goal without showing Ontarians the money.

“Here was their first chance to make good on that promise and they didn’t,” she told reporters, saying faster action on more staff is crucial with a second wave of COVID-19 here.

“I don’t have a lot of confidence.”

Phillips said “the funding will be there to pay for it.”

It’s been estimated the massive training and hiring effort to provide four hours of daily care would cost $1.6 billion a year.

Ford insisted the government is “100 per cent committed. We know the system was broken.” He pointed to recent announcements to fast-track the building of several nursing homes in next year.

Green Leader Mike Schreiner agreed with experts that the government “just can’t snap its fingers” and boost staffing in nursing homes but said that’s why more efforts at hiring should have begun last summer.

Phillips noted the tragic toll of COVID-19 in long-term care, which laid bare a string a vulnerabilities in Ontario’s 626 nursing homes where at least 2,042 residents have died from the virus, including eight more fatalities reported Thursday.

Another 52 residents have become infected in the last day, bringing the total to 7,094 since last winter.

Acting on a long-standing push from opposition parties and seniors’ advocates for the four hours of daily care that was reinforced last month in an interim recommendation by his long-term-care commission, Ford has said more staff will improve the care residents receive and ease the burden on existing employees, who are burned out after an exhausting first wave of the pandemic.

More than 2,900 nursinghome workers have caught the virus and eight have died, adding to the difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff, particularly in the hardest-hit facilities that saw staff levels drop by 80 per cent at times from illness and absenteeism as workers feared for their health.

Although Ford has said he would try to make permanent a $3 hourly wage top-up promised to personal support workers until March 31, there is no commitment in the budget to do so other than a brief mention that it “could extend” past that date.

Phillips said he is providing an extra $572 million in the massive $60.1-billion Ministry of Health budget to help hospitals cope with the “unprecedented costs” in the pandemic, which infected another 998 Ontarians in the last day and has killed 43 since Monday.

The money will go toward improved testing, assessment centres, laboratory and medical equipment and personal protective equipment.