Care,
not profit.
It’s a sad irony that, when it comes to long-term care, there’s so much short-term thinking by employers and the government. Vulnerable nursing-home residents are put at risk every day because there are not enough nurses and health-care professionals to provide safe, timely, appropriate care. For-profit corporations are making record profits, even though their residents aren’t getting the quality of care they deserve because of inadequate staffing. It’s not right, and it’s not safe.
“Understaffing makes it extremely hard to maintain our standards of practice.”
A crisis of care is quietly unfolding in Ontario’s long-term care homes.
The stories mostly go unheard, and the people who urgently want to tell them are forgotten and ignored. What truths would those stories reveal?
For-profit corporations that run more than half of the nursing homes in Ontario make billions in revenue each year, but have worse resident outcomes than those that are non-profit.
Current nurse-to-resident ratios are unsustainable – it is common for one RN to be responsible for an entire nursing home, which can be hundreds of residents.
The work in long-term care facilities is becoming increasingly challenging. Eighty-seven per cent of people entering long-term care are high or very high-need residents, including seniors with chronic complex conditions, and people with mental health or addiction issues or acquired brain injuries.
Workplace conditions are leading more nurses to leave their jobs, and even the profession.
“We’re doing more than ever for our residents, but wages aren’t keeping up.”
It’s time for urgency.
Wages for long-term care nurses are significantly lower than what hospitals are paying for comparable work. The combination of poor compensation, understaffing, and punishing workloads makes retaining and recruiting staff a massive challenge.
Ontario’s population is aging in numbers we’ve never seen, with huge implications for our health-care system. If investments aren’t made in long-term care - and especially in the people who provide the care - we’ll feel the disruption in our hospitals, our communities, and our homes. We already are.
Solutions are available. Long-term care employers must compensate nurses at the same level hospitals do to ensure there’s enough staff to meet residents’ needs. The Ontario government must also step up, by regulating staff-to-resident ratios and increasing funding.
