Provincial long-term care funding is delivered to Ontario’s nursing homes bundled in what the Ministry likes to call “envelopes.” These figures are allocated for each resident under care.
There is an envelope for nursing and personal care, another for program and support services, one for raw food costs, and a fourth for accommodations.
August 9 the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant LHIN sent out a memo outlining the increase in funding for each of these envelopes.
The per diem for nursing and personal care will rise by 1 per cent – or 86 cents – to $86.91. The per diem for program and support services will rise by just 8 cents to $8.43. Despite rapidly rising food costs, homes will only get 22 cents more per day to provide three meals, snacks and drinks. Homes receive $7.68 daily for raw food costs. The biggest winner will be the accommodations envelope, which will rise by $1.09 to $52.17.
Guess which of the four envelopes for-profit homes are allowed to draw profit from? If you guessed accommodations, you would be correct.
Given all the problems with care and support in Ontario’s nursing homes, this appears to be a very odd priority.
OPSEU Diablogue 
Why do you insist on playing politics here? If you look at percentages, the food portion gets the highest increase! We all agree that these numbers are inadequate, and our seniors are getting shafted, but by trying to play for-profit against the not-for-profit homes you are inserting a very damaging red herring into the debate. Both are here to stay–that is a given. Let’s try to work together to increase all the envelopes instead of kicking each other around.
Nursing and programming get 1 per cent and accommodations gets a little over 2 per cent. Yet the biggest concern is not accommodations, but the level of care residents are receiving. You don’t find this an odd choice of priorities? It’s true as a percentage raw food is pegged at 2.8 per cent, but the banks are predicting this week that food inflation will rise by 4 per cent due to drought conditions this summer over much of North America. These choices are definitely political.
Is there a difference in care between for-profit and not-for-profit nursing homes? According to a large meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal, the answer is yes. The study concludes: “This systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence suggests that, on average, not-for-profit nursing homes deliver higher quality care than do for-profit nursing homes. Many factors may, however, influence this relation in the case of individual institutions.” http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b2732.full
Are the accommodations funding amounts the same for both for-profit and not-for-profit homes? If not, what does the not-for-profit homes get? If the not-for-profit homes do get less, are any of their expeditures such as property tax subsidized or receive a lower assessment value than a for-profit? Unless you can make a thorough analysis on what the accommodation funding amount is based on in both sectors, you should not be making a claim that the accommodation increase only benefits the for-profit homes.
The amount is the same. The difference is the for-profits will be free to draw a percentage of that for their shareholders/owners.
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