Nursing Home Residents Need more Care Than The Sharkey Committee Officers
The unions here today have lobbied consistently for a legislated minimum staffing care standard of 3.5 hours per day per nursing home resident in Ontario.
SEIU nursing home surveys demonstrate that care standards vary greatly from home to home across the province. Some homes offer barely two hours of care per resident per day.
In December 2003 after a week long series of articles in the Toronto Star, describing the horrible conditions and lack of care nursing home residents receive, George Smitherman then Minister of Health and Long Term Care promised a revolution in long term.
The result was the Long Term Care Home Act which received royal assent on June 4, 2007. It was over 3 years, in the making but it came with no care standard. It still is not proclaimed because the regulations accompanying the Act have still not been drafted.
The Minister, just prior to the 2007 election, gave Shirley Sharkey president of St. Elizabeth Health Care the mandate to review and provide advice for determining the human resource implications related to quality of care and quality of life for residents in LTC homes.
Ms. Sharkey reported to the MOHLTC on May 14, 2008. Her report noted that a stakeholders overwhelmingly supported the need for increased staffing ratios in LTC homes in all categories of staff – those providing direct care such as PSW’s and nurses and those who provide and support the provision of special programs such as therapists, nutritionists and social workers.
The result of Sharkey’s report was the establishment the Sharkey Committee in June 2008 to develop the staffing regulations for the Long Term Care Homes Act. Unions were invited to appoint representatives to the Committee.
SEIU for its part was an eager participant. We believed there was a real opportunity to improve the quality of care Ontario nursing home residents receive on a daily basis.
As the process went on we became increasingly concerned that the Committee’s emphasis changed from meeting the needs of residents and staff workloads to the development of a staffing plan model based solely “the funding available to the home.”
A home’s Staff Planning Committee would be comprised of 12 people (1 resident, 1 family council member, 2 PSW’s, 1 RN, 1 Program and Support Staff, 3 Management, 2 governance).
SEIU is all in favour of giving residents a greater voice in the affairs of their home. We are not in favour of taking 5 staff away from caring for residents simply to sit on a committee whose function is merely to provide advice.
There is no guarantee staff serving on the committee would be replaced to ensure care was available to residents.
No home will be required to give full financial disclosure even though nursing and personal care for residents are wholly funded by the Ontario tax payer.
The “fact finding protocol” for staffing a home the Sharkey Committee has developed is subjective in nature. As it currently stands the staffing plan states, and what we object to, is summed up in Staffing Plan’s Step 5 “Make recommendations on how to meet the residents’ needs while staying within the allocated budget”.
This approach means a staffing committee can only decide whether Mrs. Smith gets 3 minutes more care per day by taking 3 minutes of care away from Mr. Jones.
This approach will mean staffing standards in nursing homes across the province will continue to vary widely. What’s needed is a provincially regulated standard all operators must meet.
In January 2007 the government set a registered nursing standard stating a nursing home must have a 25/7 RN. As a result care plans were enhanced but there was no more staff to carry out the care plans. In some cases to accommodate the RN regulation, PSWs who provide direct hands on care had their hours reduced to accommodate the RNs.
We are fearful that substandard levels of care will going forward will be blamed on the staff planning committee and deflect away from the province’s responsibility to regularly inspect and enforce standards.
The government claims staffing levels are approaching nearly 3 hours of care per resident per day. These are funded hours and in no way reflect actual worked hours of delivered care.
If the Sharkey staffing model is adopted, Ontario will continue to have one of the lowest staffing levels in the western world.