(OTTAWA) Experts are putting the finishing touches to two sets of national standards for long-term care homes, and they’re now wondering what the federal government plans to do once they’re done.
Updated yesterday at 10:45 p.m.
These new “National Standards of Canada for Long-Term Care” must reflect the needs of residents, their loved ones and the staff of long-term care homes in Canada.
The standards are expected to be approved this month by the Healthcare Standards Organization (HSO) and CSA Group, formerly the Canadian Standards Association (CSA); they will be published in December.
HSO’s long-term care committee chair, Dr. Samir Sinha, says he has spoken to federal ministers responsible for the file, who have reportedly expressed enthusiasm for the work done so far. But ministers would not have committed to making such standards mandatory until they are finalized.
Jane Sustrik remembers the feeling of fear that weighed on her during the first months of the pandemic.
Dozens of residents of her mother’s home in Edmonton have died of COVID-19, as Mme Sustrik was reading reports about the appalling conditions in long-term care centers across the country and the number of residents who have fallen victim to the virus.
Mme Sustrik was vice-president of the United Nurses of Alberta before quitting her job to care for her mother full-time in a residence. It was just before COVID-19 hit.
At the time, she remembers thinking that her big fear would be that we didn’t learn any of this.
“I feel now that we have learned a lot from COVID, but we have not done anything with it,” said M.me Sustrik in a recent interview.
Teams of experts have been working since last year to develop national standards for long-term care to reflect these hard-won lessons in the face of a pandemic and provide Canadians with a better and safer life in group homes.
The Dr Samir Sinha, who chairs the HSO’s expert panel on long-term care, spoke to federal ministers on the file and says they expressed enthusiasm about the work done so far, but are supportive. that they will impose the standards only when they are finalized.
The Liberals promised during the last election campaign to legislate safety in long-term care. This promise is also part of the agreement reached with the New Democrats to try to keep the minority Liberal government in power until the general election scheduled for 2025.
Although the federal government has called for new standards, it remains unclear how it intends to implement them, since long-term care falls under provincial and territorial jurisdiction. Premier François Legault, for example, repeats that Quebec rather expects to receive recurrent and predictable health transfers from Ottawa, without conditions, and not a set of national standards.
In the office of the Minister of Health, Jean-Yves Duclos, the questions were referred to Health Canada, which did not want to specify whether the government planned to table a bill in the House of Commons this fall.
“We want to see immediate action on this,” New Democratic Party (NDP) Leader Jagmeet Singh said at a press conference Thursday. “We need to see this standard of care legislated and we want this implemented as quickly as possible. »
The agreement between the two parties does not include a timetable for the new legislation or details of what it should contain.
Mme Sustrik said better standards are needed immediately. She finds that people have already become complacent about long-term care conditions, even as outbreaks continue in homes.
“We’re back to where we were before,” she said. I feel like nothing happened.” It is “absolutely vital” to achieve decent standards in long-term care, says Jane Sustrik.
Dr Sinha and CSA Group committee chair Alex Mihailidis say the standards will be very similar to drafts released earlier this year, with some minor “tweaks”.
The government set aside $3 billion in Budget 2021 to help provinces and territories implement the standards when they are complete, and Health Canada said in a statement that any legislation will be designed to reflect the jurisdiction of provinces on the industry.
The standards cover all aspects of life in long-term care facilities, from infection control and prevention to staff working conditions, food policies and visitors.
CSA Group received 2,000 comments on the draft draft after it was released earlier this year, Mihailidis said, and most reinforced the approach the committee was already taking. He believes the standards will help curb the transmission of COVID-19 and other epidemics.