Sask. Opposition wants mandatory minimum standards in long-term care homes
CBC
Saskatchewan's Opposition NDP is applauding new voluntary federal standards for long-term care homes, but wants the province to move forward with mandatory minimums.
On Tuesday, the Health Standards Organization (HSO) published 60 pages of comprehensive standards to complement the release of 115 pages of standards from the Canadian Standards Association Group (CSA) in December.
While the recommendations were commissioned by the federal government, health care delivery falls under provincial jurisdiction.
Matt Love, the Saskatchewan NDP's critic for education, seniors and rural and remote health, said the latest report is a chance for the province to re-evaluate long-term care regulation.
"Absolutely we need minimum standards of care, but they need to be enforceable. They need to be inspected," said Love, MLA for Saskatoon-Eastview.
"What I'd like to see from our provincial government is to see them fully adopt these suggestions and to implement them."
Both Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman and Seniors Minister Everett Hindley said they could not speak in-depth on the recently released standards Tuesday afternoon.
"At a very high level I had just heard they had been released today. I haven't had a chance to personally look at the specifics or the details," Hindley told reporters after an unrelated announcement in Saskatoon.
The federal government launched the standards project in the spring of 2021.
Both the HSO and CSA were tasked with coming up with standards to improve the quality of care in long-term care (LTC) homes across the country. The HSO focused on the care itself and the CSA on the physical infrastructure.
In Budget 2021, Ottawa set aside $3 billion to help provinces implement the standards. Experts say the work will cost far more.
In the first few months of the pandemic, more than 80 per cent of Canada's known COVID-19 deaths happened in long-term care and retirement homes — the highest such rate among 38 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
More than 17,000 residents of long-term care homes in Canada died because of COVID-19 as of July 2022, according to the National Institute on Aging.
Saskatchewan's deadliest COVID-19 outbreak at a long-term care home spanned three months at Extendicare Parkside in Regina.
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