With long-term care COVID-19 cases and deaths accounting for a dramatic proportion of Canada’s pandemic numbers, some are calling for an end to for-profit long-term care, but at least one doctor says the entire system is underfunded.
The numbers are stark: 42 per cent of the country’s long-term care homes have been hit by the coronavirus, with 10 per cent of all COVID-19 cases and 69 per cent of COVID-19 deaths occurring in long-term care homes, according to the latest data tracker from the National Institute on Ageing at Ryerson University.
Across Canada, 28 percent of long-term care facilities are for-profit, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) says. In Ontario, they account for 57 percent. These for-profit homes had “outbreaks with nearly twice as many residents infected” and 78 per cent more resident deaths compared with not-for-profit homes, a study released Wednesday by The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table showed.
“I think partly that also speaks to what’s happening underneath. We often have municipal and not-for-profit providers that actually supplement the meager amounts of money they get from the government so they can actually provide more staffing. And more staffing tends to mean better care,” Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said Thursday on CTV’s Your Morning.
Government support for long-term care in Canada lags other countries. The average amount that countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) spend on long-term care is 1.7 per cent of its GDP — higher than the 1.3 per cent Canada spends, according to OECD data. The Netherlands, in contrast, spends 3.7 per cent of its GDP.
“A lot of people are really upset with the quality of long-term care we have across Canada. And so people are looking for a quick fix and many people are just saying, end for-profit care,” Sinha said.
“A lot of for-profit facilities, they’re not going to invest their own money and sacrifice dividends to actually provide more care. That’s just not the business that they’re in.”
An earlier study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in August also found that for-profit homes were more likely to see more extensive outbreaks and more residents dying, though the actual chances of an outbreak were no greater than at non-profit homes.The paper also noted that a number of observational studies also indicated that for-profit facilities tend to deliver “inferior care” across a number of measures.
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