Rethinking Long-Term Care

Across Canada, the long-term care sector has received increased attention since the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The now often-cited statistic - 80% of deaths in the first wave occurred among individuals residing in institutional long-term care - is tragic enough and is only compounded by the fact that the number of deaths in long-term care were still higher in the second wave in all but two provinces. Many have argued that the impact of the pandemic was amplified in the institutional long-term care sector because of a number of long-standing shortfalls in funding, space, staffing and infrastructure. For example, Canadian provinces had lower average direct hours of care (three hours per day) provided to residents in long-term care facilities than even the average of four hours per day provided in the United States (Hsu et al. 2016).