Canada’s new national long-term care standards released. Here’s what is different
Global News
A draft of updated recommendations to improve care provided by nursing homes was unveiled Thursday and will now undergo a 60-day public review.
New national standards have been released to improve Canada’s long-term care facilities, where residents and staff have borne the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A draft of the recommendations was unveiled for public review by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), Health Standards Organization (HSO) and Canadian Standards Association (CSA Group) on Thursday.
The revised guidelines come after a 21 month-long process including town halls and consultation workbooks involving over 18,000 Canadians and stakeholders that started back in March 2020 — right when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada.
Dr. Samir Sinha, HSO’s long-term care services technical committee chair, said he is hopeful this will provide a “clear blueprint” to enable the federal government, provinces and territories to move long-term care “to where all Canadians are demanding it to go.”
“We know that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted long-term care homes across Canada and currently of over 30,000 deaths that have occurred, over 51 per cent of them have actually occurred in our long-term care and retirement homes — and that represents nearly 16,000 deaths to date,” Sinha said during a virtual news briefing Tuesday ahead of the launch.
Long-term care homes across the country are experiencing outbreaks and staffing shortages amid the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Provinces have prioritized vaccine boosters for residents and tightened visitor restrictions to blunt the impact of this variant of concern.
HSO developed its first long-term care services standards between 2012 and 2014, which were then revised between 2018 and 2020.
