In 2023, the Health Standards Organization (HSO) recommended a minimum of 4.1 hours of direct care per resident each day in long-term care, including 1.3 hours provided by licensed nursing providers and 0.75 hours by RNs.
We’ve been asking the provincial government to take the necessary steps to meet that standard since long before 2023: through letters, reports, and direct meetings with government leadership.
Nursing home residents in New Brunswick currently receive 3.09 hours of direct care per day. The province has committed $2.6 million to increase that by 0.1 hours starting in January. This amounts to an extra six minutes per resident per day – falling short of HSO standards by 0.8 hours. The impact of this shortfall is felt not only by nurses, but also by nursing home residents and their families.
Nurses understand the value of a properly resourced facility. Why? Long-term care homes are first and foremost a senior’s home, where they live around the clock during the final years of their lives and receive the supervised care that vulnerable people need and deserve.
When long-term care facilities are under-resourced, as they are today, it becomes impossible to consistently meet a minimum standard of care and respect for residents. At the same time, the complexity of residents’ medical needs continues to grow. Increasingly, residents are entering long-term care with complex comorbidities, requiring more time from licensed and professional staff. We hear from nurses every day that the standard they are expected to uphold is becoming unattainable because 3.3 hours of care per day, let alone 3.09 hours, is simply not enough to ensure residents receive appropriate care and support.
A few weeks ago, the New Brunswick Association of Nursing Homes joined the call to increase the minimum hours of care to 4.1, asking government to invest $117.5 million over five years to ensure nursing homes have the staff and resources needed to support that increase. We wholeheartedly support that request.
We’ve said it before: the care we provide doesn’t come with caveats. No one’s care needs fluctuate according to a deficit budget or a four-year political cycle.
That’s why investing in long term care is essential, deficit budget or no deficit budget.
Yet, we keep having to make the case for giving us the resources we need to fulfill government’s promise to New Brunswickers. We have done so through letters, meetings, and ongoing advocacy with government leadership, and we will continue to push for action. Until long-term care is treated with the priority and respect it deserves, New Brunswick’s health care system will remain in a state of perpetual crisis.
