The Auditor General of New Brunswick is accusing the government of underfunding nursing homes, something that he reports has been going on well before the COVID-19 pandemic. He urges the government to take the necessary steps to rectify the situation as quickly as possible.
In his report released on September 7, Auditor General Paul Martin points out that for years, annual inspections of nursing homes persistently identified shortages of clinical staff, but that the Department of Social Development had done nothing to solve the problem. Staff shortages have a serious impact not only on the health care workers, who are exhausted, but also on the quality of care the elderly people living in these nursing homes receive.
Marcel Larocque, President of the Association francophone des aînées et aînés du Nouveau-Brunswick, says he is not surprised by the Auditor General’s findings.
“Last year, we described the neglect suffered by seniors in our nursing homes, mainly because of the lack of human and financial resources, the lack of food, the lack of personal hygiene care, and so on. All this is contained in our report New Brunswick’s Elders Neglected and Forgotten. Of the six recommendations we made to the government to improve the care of seniors, none has been implemented to date,” Laroque said.
Larocque has repeatedly requested a meeting with the minister responsible for seniors, but Kathy Bockus yet to find the time to meet with him. “When is the government going to look after the people of New Brunswick?” he asks.
The shortage of staff in care homes means that elderly people are not receiving the minimum care they need.
The Nursing Homes Act specifies that 15 per cent of health care workers should be registered nurses, 20 per cent licensed practical nurses and 65 per cent resident attendants. But in 2018, only 70 per cent of assessed nursing homes met this standard. Yet nothing was done to solve this problem. Since then, the situation has seriously deteriorated: 87 per cent of nursing homes surveyed by the Auditor General did not meet this standard in 2022. The Act also specifies that in homes with 30 beds or more, there should be a registered nurse on site at all times. Non-compliance with this element of the Act rose from 10 per cent in 2018 to 40 per cent in 2022.
The Auditor General concludes that the Department of Social Development did not have the means to enforce the Nursing Homes Act. The report recommends that the government provide the necessary funding to enforce the Act, and that it develops a recruitment strategy for health care workers as soon as possible.
The purpose of the Nursing Homes Act is to establish who is responsible for what in nursing homes, and what minimum standards must be met to ensure the well-being of the people who live there. Given what the Auditor General’s report on nursing homes tells us, one can wonder what a law is worth when even the government doesn’t respect it. And when the law is not respected, who pays the price?
Bernadette Landry is co-chair of the New Brunswick Health Coalition and a member of the Dieppe-Moncton Regional Committee of the Association francophone des aînées et aînés du N.-B.
