THE Office of the Seniors Advocate’s updated B.C. Long-Term Care and Assisted Living Directory notes a slight increase in funding but longer wait times for long-term care.
The 2024 directory provides objective, standardized information on 431 publicly-subsidized long-term care and assisted living facilities in a searchable, online format. The directory, which is updated annually, is a popular public resource with over 80,000 page visits per year.
A number of important care quality measures are included such as: funded care hours, number of beds and room configuration, spending on food, medication use, use of physical restraints, complexity of care in the resident population, licensing complaints, reportable incidents and inspection reports.
“This is the second year all long-term care facilities were funded to meet the provincial guideline of at least 3.36 hours of direct care staff per resident, per day which is good news. The average funded direct care hours last year were 3.43 hours per bed per day, up slightly from the previous year,” said Dan Levitt, BC Seniors Advocate, on Wednesday. “The new nationally recommended guideline is 4.1 hours of direct care per resident per day and we must ensure this updated standard is established in B.C. in order to meet the increasing care needs of residents.”
Changes in the directory include easier identification of facilities with both long-term care and assisted living units at the same location for people who want to age in place. This year’s directory also includes wait times for people assessed as being non-urgent and admitted to long-term care from the community, as well as overall wait times for all seniors whether they are admitted from home or the hospital. This is the tenth directory the Office of the Seniors Advocate has updated and released for the public.
Highlights in the 2024 B.C. Long-Term Care and Assisted Living Directory include:
* Long-Term Care
– The average wait time for all new admissions (from community and hospital) for long-term care was 112 days, a 11% increase from last year. The average wait time for non-urgent admissions from community was 233 days.
– The proportion of residents taking antipsychotics without a diagnosis of psychosis was 28%, an increase of 17% from five years ago and unchanged from 2022/23.
– The average food cost in long-term care increased 9% from 2022/23 to $10.99 per bed per day. The minimum mandatory per bed per day food cost in Ontario is $13.07.
– The rate of influenza vaccinations for residents in long-term care decreased from 88% in 2022/23 to 84% last year.
– The rate of health care workers vaccinated in long-term care facilities decreased from 39% in 2022/23 to 35% last year, the lowest since the influenza prevention policy was enacted in 2012.
* Assisted Living
– The average wait time for admission to assisted living was 132 days last year, up 13% from 2022/23.
– The average food cost for assisted living increased 4.4% from the previous year to $9.57 per unit per day in 2023/24.
– The percentage of assisted living residents with four or more visits to the emergency room in one year was 14%, up from 11% in 2022/23.
– There were 62 complaints involving assisted living residences, a 7% increase from 2022/23, of which 10 (16%) were substantiated, a 41% decrease from the previous year.
“We must continue to monitor care quality, identify systemic themes and measure progress in order to make improvements for people in long-term care and assisted living,” said Levitt. “The directory helps seniors and their loved ones access and compare important information about long-term care and assisted living facilities so they can make decisions about the future.”
Website: www.seniorsadvocatebc.ca
