Proposed long-term care standards will improve residents' care, Alberta operator says

The head of one of the major operators of long-term care sites in Edmonton says proposed national standards for the facilities could profoundly improve the care for residents. 

The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) released a package last week containing recommendations for standards for long-term care, calling for single rooms with private bathrooms, dedicated sinks for hand-hygiene, and better plans to cover staff shortages when "catastrophic" events happen. 

Shawn Terlson, president and CEO of the Shepherd's Care Foundation in Edmonton, said the COVID-19 pandemic put a microscope on the challenges long-term care facilities have been facing for years, and the need for a national standard of care.

"The foundation of the report is really promoting resident-centred care with a compassionate, team-based approach," Terlson said.

"Really providing a welcoming and safe home-like environment and the foundation to both of those things is really respecting the residents' rights and enabling meaningful quality of life for the residents that call our homes their home."

Terlson said seniors are living longer and the nature of care is changing. 

"A lot of the individuals we see in long-term care, 10 years ago we would have seen them in acute care settings and now we're providing much higher levels of care in long term care and that results in a definite need for increased funding and increased staffing," he said.

According to its website, Shepherd's Care Foundation serves more than 900 residents in the Edmonton area. Some of its sites have dealt with COVID-19 outbreaks, including a deadly one in the fall of 2020 at its Mill Woods facility. 

The CSA draft standards released last week are part of a larger package of standards requested by the federal government in spring last year. 

The first part of that package was released last month by the Health Standards Organization (HSO). It proposed standards for the quality of direct care that covered things like staffing and residents' rights.

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai and the University Health Network Hospitals in Toronto, chaired one of two committees that put together the new recommendations.

He said medical professionals are often trained to provide care in more hospital-like settings than someone's home.

"[Focusing on] how do you staff these homes to efficiently get people bathed and washed and fed ... sometimes we forget that these are people who are living in their home and who are often living with really complex needs such as," Sinha said, pointing to conditions like dementia that require extra attention and a high level of training.

"These aren't concepts that are necessarily universally taught or understood when we're training to be health-care professionals or where the bulk of health-care professionals actually get their training."