N.S. to spend $57M to add staff and beds to long-term care

Nova Scotia's PC government has laid out a plan to spend $57 million on long-term care over the next 2½ years that is meant to alleviate long wait times for beds and long-standing staff shortages.

Premier Tim Houston announced the plan Wednesday in Dartmouth at the Ivany Campus of the Nova Scotia Community College, one of the sites offering training for continuing care assistants. CCAs make up the bulk of the long-term care workforce and are in high demand.

Houston said growing the CCA workforce is the main goal of the new multimillion dollar plan.

"We can add all the beds we want but it helps no one if we don't have qualified dedicated staff to care for the residents, so that's the priority, is making sure we support those working in the sector and attract more people to the sector," he said.

Provincial officials said they cannot accurately quantify the CCA shortfall but will have a better understanding next year when a professional registry comes into effect. There are currently about 6,600 provincially funded full-time CCA positions in Nova Scotia across the acute and long-term care sectors.

Making up the largest share of the new plan is $22 million to cover 100 per cent of tuition costs for about 2,200 students to take the CCA program over the next two years. New seats are not being created; provincial officials said there is capacity in programs across the province.

CCA training is available at 11 NSCC locations and five private career colleges.

The province has created a new "work and learn" curriculum that will allow students to study three days a week and work for two days, starting 28 days after the program begins. The Cape Breton Business College has already started offering the program and the province is hoping more colleges will take it up.

Where the rest of the money will go

The province expects students in the new program to be in the workforce starting in February.

The rest of the $57 million falls into three categories: worker recruitment, worker retention and increasing bed capacity.

For worker recruitment:

• $3.1 million in tuition rebates for current students already in CCA training programs.
• $2.1 million to recruit CCAs nationally and internationally, including up to $10,000 in relocation expenses for as many as 200 people, in exchange for a two-year work commitment.
• $1.3 million to be added to an existing innovation fund that facilities can tap into for regionally-specific recruitment efforts.
• $630,000 for a prior-learning recognition program.

For worker retention:

• $8 million for long-term care homes to offer their casual and part-time staff full-time work, or to hire more front-line staff including dietitians, physiotherapists or occupational therapists.
• $1.4 million to for a standardized system to make scheduling more efficient.
• $1.3 million to be added to an existing professional development fund for long-term care staff.
• $466,000 to pilot a "wellness support program" that will provide injured or ill employees access to physiotherapy, occupational therapy, social work services and psychological services that do not fall under the workers compensation program.

To increase bed capacity:

• $6.1 million to convert and license about 100 beds in residential care facilities and assisted living facilities so they're equipped for a nursing-home level of care.
• $5.9 million to license and fund 30 beds from Veterans Affairs Canada that are currently vacant.
• $1.8 million to extend an agreement with Shannex and Sisters of Charity to keep 23 temporary nursing home beds open for another year.
• $3.1 million to hire temporary staff to ensure all long-term care beds can be open.

Promise for 2,500 new beds still stands 

The PCs promised during the summer election they would build 2,500 new long-term care beds over the next three years. Houston said Wednesday that promise still stands. The proposed converted beds are not counted toward that total.

Barbara Adams, minister for seniors and long-term care, said plans for new beds initiated by the previous Liberal government will be honoured.

"We are in the process of establishing the workforce in order to make that happen," Adams told reporters Wednesday. "One of the first things we have to do is inspect all of the long-term care facilities in order to establish additional priorities above and beyond what the previous government had already done."

Little more than a week ago, many long-term care workers rallied at sites across the province calling on the province to invest more in long-term care. They said they are burned out from being overworked and underpaid.

Two of their primary asks are for a wage increase and a mandated staffing ratio of 4.1 hours of daily care per resident. Neither of those are covered in the PC's new spending plan. 

Houston said long-term care workers should take Wednesday's announcement as a signal that he is listening and things are changing. He added, however, that there is more work to be done before the "crisis" in long-term care will be resolved.

"We have a lot of work to be done just slow that negative momentum," Houston said. "This train is going in a negative way and you're seeing us take a number of steps to stop that train, and then that train will turn around in a positive way."

Continuing care assistants make between $17 and $19 an hour, on average. Houston said he thinks they should make more and his government is a "willing partner," but wage negotiations must happen at the bargaining table.

Adams reiterated her promise to legislate 4.1 hours of daily care, once staffing levels improve.

Houston said everything in Wednesday's announcement "is driving toward that standard."