B.C. long-term care home report criticized for not consulting industry group
Credit to Author: Kevin Griffin| Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2020 00:50:48 +0000
A report looking into public funding of long-term care homes was criticized Wednesday for not consulting with the industry group representing non-governmental providers of long-term care.
Daniel Fontaine, chief operating officer of the B.C. Care Providers Association, questioned the Office of the Seniors Advocate for not consulting with his association, which has more than 350 member organizations delivering long-term care, home health and assisted living in B.C.
“I think when you ask the average British Columbian, they would find that a bit odd,” he said.
“It hasn’t happened once, it hasn’t happened twice. It’s a continual pattern.”
On Tuesday, the OSA released A Billion Reasons to Care: A Funding Review of Contracted Long-Term Care in B.C. The review said it was based on contracts, audited financial statements and expense reports.
The report said there are more than 27,000 seniors living in 293 publicly funded long-term care homes; 182, or 62 per cent, are operated by private-sector contractors and not-for-profit societies. Contracted long-term care costs taxpayers $1.3 billion a year.
“For the most part, those who operate care homes in B.C. — whether they are health authorities, for-profit companies or not-for-profit societies — want to provide the best possible experience for their residents,” Isobel Mackenzie, the seniors advocate, says in the report.
“However, it must be acknowledged that, for many operators, the long-term care home is also a business. For-profit care homes, by the nature of their business, expect to demonstrate a profit/surplus; this underlying fact sets in motion incentives that may, at times, conflict with the best interests of the resident.”
Daniel Fontaine, chief operating officer of the B.C. Care Providers Association, questioned the Office of the Seniors Advocate for not consulting with his association. ‘I think when you ask the average British Columbian, they would find that a bit odd,’ he says.
Fontaine said when he read his copy of the report, he thought pages were missing because of what he described as the complete absence of any “analysis of government-owned and operated care homes” which account for 33 per cent of care homes in B.C.
He said if the report had taken a more balanced look at all the providers in the long-term care sector, it would have more credibility.
Fontaine said the Office of the Seniors Advocate would carry more weight if it didn’t report to the Ministry of Health and instead reported to the legislature like the Office of the Ombudsperson and Representative for Children and Youth.
He pointed to statistics on wages. The report said care aides in for-profit homes earn up to $16.85 an hour or $6.63 an hour less than the standard wage of $23.48.
Fontaine said the industry standard on which the figure is based is the master collective agreement negotiated by the Hospital Employees Union, which represents about 20,000 workers in long-term care.
“I take issue with that,” he said. “I don’t think that is the industry standard.”
Fontaine said the industry standard should be WorkBC, which pegs the median salary for care aides at $21 an hour and not $23.48, which he called “more like the gold standard.”
“We’ve been telling the minister, the ministry and the seniors advocate to work with us. You don’t have to make this into a battle every time you issue a report. This is not an us and them,” he said.
“There are ways to work at this and improve health outcomes for seniors.”
He said everyone at B.C. Care Providers Association welcomed the recognition by the seniors advocate that there’s a huge labour shortage in B.C. that amounts to a crisis in providing front-line care for seniors.
“We support and were pleased to see that in this report.”
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