Bruce County’s Long-Term Care Homes continue to face issues with staffing, according to a new report.
During a committee meeting, the county’s Director of Long-Term Care and Senior Services, Megan Garland, shared that the main issue is the scarcity of qualified healthcare professionals who are willing to work in Brucelea Haven and Gateway Haven.
Garland says that since they’re not able to hire more staff, they’ve needed to rely on agencies in order to make up for staffing shortages for registered nurses, registered practical nurses, and personal support workers.
“Under the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, the homes are obligated to have a staffing plan and a contingency plan, and they need to ensure that those plans are met. In order to meet those plans, at times, the homes have been bridging the gap by using staffing agencies.”
She told the Long-Term Care Committee that the homes are able to provide the legally mandated four hours of care for residents per day.
“But what is happening is the provincial funding doesn’t fund us to allow for those staffing compliments at an agency price. So some of our overspending can be directly contributed to that.”
The report outlines that in the first quarter of 2023, the county used staffing agencies to cover 23% of direct care hours, which worked out to 13,481 hours for nursing and personal support workers across both homes and that even with the supplemental staffing, there were still 440 hours that went uncovered during each two-week pay period, which is a 20% reduction.
The report also shows that the homes have received their funding for 2023-24, and the next provincial target is going to be met in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Included in the expenses for agency staff, particularly during the pandemic, was that the staff were further away and were required an accommodation premium for that added travel time and expense.
“Part of our re-negotiation has been looking at some more newer, local agencies that have transpired, who have been able to provide us with staff who are local so that we can avoid that cost as such.”
The ideal situation would be to not need to rely on agencies to cover shifts, but the long-term care homes are not able to hire full-time employees, due to the shortage of healthcare professionals.
The report that was submitted to the committee outlines that there is a vacancy equivalent to 33 staff positions, with 17 of those for personal support workers.
Bruce County pays a competitive salary to nursing and PSW staff compared to neighbouring Grey County, but some committee members, including Warden Chris Peabody, shared their desire to find if it’s possible to find the funding to offer 10-15% more.