CANADA’S NEW LTC STANDARDS – ACCOUNTABILITY & RISK MANAGEMENT on a MISSION
Author: Gisele Guenard, BScN, MEd, VisionarEase Inc. & associates CEO, Founder – Client Centered Governance ® Essentials Certification & Nonprofit strategic planning services. FULL ARTICLE – Published in the British Medical Journal – Evidence-Based Nursing
Warehouses for Death – Decades ago, research I completed for an undergrad paper drove me to pen ‘Warehouses for Death’ as its title. Accountability and risk management were not part of the paper’s lexicon: it was more of a whistleblower-styled piece. I was a post-RN student in the BScN program at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. This was in the 80s, before Long-Term Care (LTC) Standards were anywhere near what they are now. It was common then, and I’m afraid still today, to hear seniors swear they would never “go into a nursing home, because that’s where people go to die.” Topping the list of answers to the question, “How did we get here?”, is the fact that LTC was never protected as other areas were, when our health care system was cobbled together in the ’60s, nor when the Canada Health Act became law in the ’80s.[1] I do know however, that excellent care is being provided in many LTC homes, most of the time. It is those times when systems can fail, such as a pandemic, that have brought the current crisis in LTC. And we can change that.
The COVID-19 Pandemic has tragically revealed that safety and the quality of care in many LTC homes remains far from where it needs to be. Leaders across the sector have loudly echoed the calls for change seen in media since March 2020 – when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic. This call from leaders includes Ontario’s scathing Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission Interim report.[2] The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), revealed in 2020, that Canada’s dismal record on COVID-19 mortality included this statistic: over 80% of 1st-Wave deaths were in LTC. This was a powerful call to action: our death rate was twice the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average.[3] LEARN MORE about how the quality of life, for LTC Residents will continue to improve… if Boards and Leaders ‘make it so’… (full blog article on British Medical Journal – Evidence-Based Nursing site)
[1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-6/page-1.html
[2] http://www.ltccommission-commissionsld.ca/ir/pdf/20201023_First_Interim_Letter_English.pdf / COVID-19 Commission Final Report
[3] https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/covid-19-rapid-response-long-term-care-snapshot-en.pdf