National Post (National Edition)
Ontario doctors call for long-term care home reform
Status quo `grave humanitarian crisis,' letter says
A group of Ontario doctors has called the crisis in long-term care a “grave humanitarian crisis” and have issued a list of demands on how the province can improve the care of vulnerable residents.
In an open letter to the province, signed by nearly 400 doctors, researchers and other professionals, they say the response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Ontario long-term care homes — which have seen 3,400 deaths among staff and residents and nearly 20,000 cases — has been “reactionary at best.”
“The lack of transparency and coordinated provincial oversight has resulted in piecemeal interventions that are too late, or sometimes, even non-existent,” the letter says.
Dr. Naheed Dosani, a palliative care physician, one of the letter's signatories and founders of Doctors for Justice in LTC, which describes itself as a group of doctors and advocates “who are tired of the inaction of our government in the midst of a humanitarian crisis,” said health-care providers couldn't remain silent any longer.
“We've come together to say enough is enough,” Dosani said.
The letter argues there were multiple lessons not learned or heeded following the first wave of the pandemic, and that little has been done to improve infection-control procedures in the second wave: delayed responses to outbreaks; lack of transparency in communication with families about outbreaks; and staffing shortages in care homes.
“In many circumstances, residents are also left without basic care, hygiene, food and water. This is a human rights violation,” the letter says.
A report from the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table says that during the first wave, 64.5 per cent of Ontario's COVID-19 deaths were among long-term care residents. It also found that for-profit long-term care homes, which comprise 58 per cent of the 626 care homes in Ontario — 16 per cent are municipally owned and 24 per cent are charities or non-profits — had 78 per cent more deaths than the others.
The letter calls upon the province to end for-profit long-term care, and to use “all powers and resources available” to improve worsening staffing levels, to set a minimum wage for frontline long-term care workers, improve their benefits and training, and make 70 per cent of them full time.
“For all the rhetoric we're hearing about `health-care heroes' it's time to put our money where our mouth is,” Dosani said.
Dosani added there are actions that are immediately necessary to tackle the pandemic, but also ones required to deal with some of the fundamental problems in long-term care that have existed across years and governments.
“We also feel that addressing the systemic underpinnings of what got us here and the conditions that got us here are very important,” he said.
The signatories also want the government to allow “unrestricted entry into LTC homes” to family member caregivers and to legislate their ability to do so “whether they are in COVID-19 outbreak or not.”
“Urgent action is needed now. This is a matter of life and death,” the letter says.
The Ontario Long-Term care Ministry did not immediately return a National Post request for comment. The Ontario Long Term Care Association, which represents for-profit, government and non-profit/ charitable care homes, also did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.