LTC inquiry essential, but help is also needed immediately

Ontario clearly needs an independent public inquiry into our seriously broken long-term-care system, but our parents and grandparents living in some of those homes need help now.

Government could take some quick steps to make a huge difference, and address problems that nurses, staff, LTC residents and families complained about for years, concerns that were virtually ignored as conditions for vulnerable seniors deteriorated into a living hell.

A long-standing staffing crisis was massively exacerbated by COVID-19, which ravaged many Ontario longterm-care homes, where most of the province’s deaths from the virus occurred.

Most LTC jobs are part-time, temporary, casual or contract, with no benefits and relatively low pay, so many staff work at two or three homes to make ends meet. Ontario, very late in the pandemic, said they could only work in one LTC home to try to limit further spread of COVID-19, making the staffing crisis even worse.

With staff too sick too work, too afraid to work, or in isolation, the province had to call in the Canadian Armed Forces to help feed and look after residents in five of the worst-hit homes. Four of the five are privately run, prompting Premier Doug Ford to threaten to tear up the licences of LTC operators who put profits ahead of patients. And he didn’t stop there.

Ford said shareholders should hold executives responsible for the horrid conditions in their homes, knowing that former premier Mike Harris is chair of the board of Chartwell Retirement Residences, the largest private LTC operator in Canada. “I would expect as a shareholder to start holding the CEO and the chair accountable. We’re going to hold them accountable.”

Making most LTC jobs full time, with benefits and a livable wage, would go a long way toward being able to provide a more consistent, and hopefully much improved, quality of care.

Ontario also needs increased staffing levels, using more Registered Nurses, Registered Practical Nurses, and Nurse Practioners, in addition to better trained personal support workers.

The government will have to quickly increase funding to make these things happen, but if politicians can get money out the door quickly to help everyone else in the pandemic, they should be able to move just as quickly to ensure long-term-care residents are properly cared for.

There’s also a serious problem with the LTC inspection system in Ontario if it took a report from the military — on scene for just weeks — to actually awaken the government to the fact living conditions in some homes are so appalling, so disgusting, most of us would gag.

TVO quoted a former LTC inspector saying they were sometimes told not to find anything wrong in a home because “the administrator is a friend of a friend.” That kind of allegation should be probed at a public inquiry, which could find out how things got so bad, and why years of complaints by families and staff fell on deaf ears.

A public inquiry, or Ford’s commission of inquiry, could also help determine who should be held accountable — politicians, private owners, administrators, inspectors, or their bosses at the Ministry of Long Term Care. But accountability isn’t action, and action is what’s needed now.

We should also debate the role of the private sector, consider if LTC homes should be part of our public health-care system, but that’s not a change that could happen quickly, easily, or cheaply.

Our most vulnerable seniors are crying out for our help. Let’s listen this time.