In its 2016-2017 budget, the McNeil government implemented a one per cent decrease in overall funding for long-term care and residential care facilities, resulting in $3.4 million in cuts across the province.
“The board of directors and management are very concerned about the impact on the quality of care that our residents receive and that our staff can deliver with these continued reductions,” said Emily MacEachern, administrator at Valley View Villa in Riverton.
The cuts come on top of funding reductions the year before – in the equipment allowance and in operations funding.
MacEachern said the decreases equated to a six per cent reduction in the 2015-2016 year, resulting in a deficit for Valley View Villa, which has 112 beds.
At the Maritime Oddfellows Home in Pictou, administrator Michael Archibald said over the last two fiscal years the cut is 13 per cent of the facility’s operating budget, which is the only area where spending can be reduced.
Health and Wellness Minister Leo Glavine said before the cuts were implemented, his department met with a cross section of long-term care facility administrators to see if they could “mitigate against the press of a one per cent cut.”
He said they were asked to review current contracts and work with neighbouring nursing homes around procurement, as well as trying to do things like find a better deal on insurance. Glavine said the administrators said “they felt they could mitigate. If that changes, we would certainly take a look at funds they require to run nursing homes.”
Glavine said one area not affected by the funding decreases is the number of nursing hours provided by RNs and LPNs to residents, with a certain number mandated by the Health Department. “There’s absolutely no change in that. The one per cent is about administrative efficiency,” he said.
“I believe we have asked administrators to be a bit more creative, to review current ways in which they operate and do the best they can with this pressure.”
MacEachern said in an effort to find savings to deal with the reductions, Valley View Villa is exploring internal management restructure; shared services, group purchasing and procurement.
“Valley View Villa recognizes the efforts of government to evolve home care as it clearly needed, however, nursing homes are needed as well,” she said.
Glavine said home care is a quickly growing area of need, noting that the province has been able to reduce the number of hours of unfilled home care needs in recent months.
Archibald said a recent study looking at resident quality of life, led by Janice Keefe and Kevin Kelloway, found that homes offering residents and families a feeling of home-likeness was significantly associated with increased quality of life.
“These two years of consecutive cuts go straight to the core of how homes promote home-likeness. Our home has struggled for many years to operate within the budget received from the Department of Health and Wellness,” he said.
“Budgets started being cut last year and again this year in an environment where other costs are significantly increasing (except for heating oil), having two per cent of our budget taken away forces us to tighten spending in all areas… this is very hard when we know this has such a negative impact on the quality of life for the residents for which we care,” said Archibald.
The Maritime Oddfellows Home has 47 beds at its facility.
“No one dreams of living their last days in a nursing home, but at Valley View Villa, we pride ourselves in creating a homelike environment because the residents who live with us are clearly here because they need to be. Our staff, management and board of directors strive to make our ‘institution’ a happy home for the residents who live here – this is our reason for operating,” said MacEachern.
“The real effect of Stephen McNeil’s talk about ‘fiscal restraint’ is that the residents of nursing homes and care facilities are forced to make do with less,” said NDP Leader Gary Burrill. “It is absurd to think that you can cut $3.4 million from nursing home and residential care budgets without impacting programming, diet or staff.”
