The Ontario government’s plan to increase staffing levels in the province’s long term care homes cannot achieve its goal says two U.S. experts in an upcoming report commissioned by the Ontario Health Coalition.
The Ontario government reneged on its promise to bring in staffing standards after the last election, instead hiring Shirley Sharkey, a home care CEO, to make recommendations for the nursing home sector.
Sharkey’s May 2008 report, People Caring for People: Impacting the Quality of Life and Care of Residents of Long-Term Care Homes, suggests increased funding and voluntary staffing standards to be established by each home.
Toby Edelman, a senior policy attorney with the Washington-based Center for Medicare Advocacy, and Charlene Harrington, professor emeritus of sociology and nursing at the University of California, will argue in their report that such voluntary reimbursement-based approaches have been tried in their country for more than 20 years without success.
The full report is expected to be publicly release soon.
In December OPSEU members joined the Ontario Health Coalition in meetings with members of the McGuinty cabinet, bringing with them advance copies of the report.
Despite a series of well-publicized incidents that had the public calling for tighter regulation of Ontario’s long term care homes, proposed regulatory change has mostly involved the loosening and removal of many such regulations.
OPSEU Diablogue 
Kudos to OPSEU for bringing these issues to the forefront of all HCDC members.
Regarding Long Term Care, we are all impacted by the governments failure to live up to their promises. Every one of us has known someone in long term care and know that staffing is scarce and those on the floor are always busy.
I am one who works in this field. We tend to put the resident first, make decisions all shift long and yes, sometimes feel that we didn’t do enough even though it was the best we could given the lack of resources.
Now is the time to stand together and demand that our Liberal government fulfill their promise.