B.C. shares data on seniors’ care homes

Long-term Care Facilities Quick Facts Directory is out, says Isobel Mackenzie.

Last week, my office released the 2019 Long-term Care Facilities Quick Facts Directory. It contains five years of data that provide information about each publicly funded long-term care home in B.C. Seniors and families can use this tool to obtain access to reliable information about the province’s 294 publicly funded long-term care homes.

The directory allows you to compare items including the number of funded care hours, facility inspections, licensing infractions, the number of private rooms, and some key quality indicators such as the use of antipsychotic medications, level of social engagement, the ability to access physiotherapy and the results of the residential care survey for that care home. This information may assist seniors and families in making important decisions in choosing a long-term care home.

In 2019, improvements in long-term care home performance show significant increases in the funded care hours and a drop in substantiated licensing complaints from 7.4 per 1,000 beds to 5.9. We found that 76 per cent of residents are in a single room, the average age of residents, at 85, remains unchanged, and we saw no increase in the complexity of care needs.

The increase in care hours is welcome news to seniors, the people who love them and the people who care for them. While this is a very important step toward improving the quality of care for the our most frail and vulnerable seniors, it is only one piece of the puzzle.

We need to continue to listen to seniors and their families and ensure that care hours are directed to what matters most to them. In the Residential Care Survey (2017), seniors and their families made a resounding call for more staff, increased bathing, more assistance at meal times and more help to the toilet.

Government has come to the table with increased funding and operators are determining how to use these dollars to deliver the type of care and activities that residents have requested. If the survey data from our Residential Care Survey taught us anything, it was that residents and their families were clear about their priorities, and nothing illustrated this more than the 64 per cent of residents who called for more frequent bathing.

One area that continues to raise questions is the variation in overall funded per-diem rates for the 62 per cent of care homes that are operated by contracted providers. With per diems ranging from $182 to $272 and daily expenditures on food ranging from $5.21 to $19.88 per resident day, and care homes providing the same services, there are some obvious questions as to why such differences exist. With $1.4 billion a year flowing to contracted care providers, we should look for more transparency and accountability on expenditures.

The Quick Facts Directory highlights several performance indicators that can offer care home operators opportunities for quality improvement. For example, B.C. has very low utilization of physiotherapists and we have a low rate of social engagement. Would increasing the use of physiotherapists result in better physical function and more residents participating in social activities? How can we continue to reduce the use of antipsychotic medications, and why is there a big difference between the number of residents diagnosed with depression (23.4 per cent) and the number receiving antidepressant medication (48.5 per cent)?

Hopefully, operators, residents and family members will be asking these questions as they look at the indicators for their care home. Operators can look at the results of the survey for their facility and see what residents and families are identifying as priority issues. This information can help them to determine how best to use increased direct-care hours.