Grey Highlands Councillor Stewart Halliday asked me for details about why I changed my opinion on the Grey County Long-term Care decision, now supporting the amalgamation of 166 LTC spaces in Durham and re-purposing Grey Gables for other seniors' residential services. This was my reply.
I respect your enthusiasm to fight for your constituency.
In the best of all possible worlds, I would agree with your position, but I refer again to the Grey County Long-term Care review.
As I understand it, there are 316 County-run LTC beds. At the moment we have 96 LTC beds (publicly and privately operated) per 1000 population over 75 - one of the highest ratios in the province. If provincial policy holds, the only risk to those beds is if any licence holder (including the County) does not prepare an adequate and timely plan to upgrade their facilities to class A standards. We can already see that Southbridge Care Homes are far down the road with their plans to amalgamate their two facilities in Owen Sound, one in Chatsworth and one in Chesley into a single class A facility in Owen Sound. A change in government may well increase the number of overall licences in Ontario, but they will most likely begin by topping up underserviced areas with 2-4 year waiting lists in an attempt to reach the ratio we now enjoy.
Smaller homes have challenges providing the personalized care and skills required to meet a full range of ever more complex resident needs. We already see the challenges in providing consistency of care as facilities across the County are filling shifts with staff from agencies as far away as Brampton. Staff who are working more than one part-time job in more than one municipality do not have the employment stability or security we want for our care-givers nor our citizens.
In 2016, there were 9760 people over the age of 75 in Grey County, out of a population of 93,830. If the national averages hold true here, 976 of those will, at some point, require long-term care. The County is providing licensed LTC beds for 316 of these people at a current annual cost to the taxpayers of $6.2 million, and this cost will escalate. The cost difference between a 100 or 150 bed facility and a 66 bed facility, already a few thousand dollars per resident per pear, will be magnified over time.
There are obvious efficiencies in running one facility over two - in maintenance, kitchen, insurance and laundry alone. If those savings, plus the capital from the sale of Grey Gables, were invested in other services for our senior population, all residents of Grey County, including those in your municipality, would stand to benefit. Much more than money is involved, but money does equal services, and that is what Grey County's residents require.
Newcomers follow jobs, recreational opportunities, housing, schools, transportation, and services for a broad range of ages and stages of life. As few people aspire to living in Long Term Care and it is most often in the final months or few years of that minority who do require this housing, I do not think the existence of such a facility in a community is a major part of newcomers' location choice.
As for current residents, you [Mr. Halliday] wrote "The three current locations provide an equitable distribution of service to each service area." The current CCAC system does not guarantee placement in one's own community, and there is no evidence that any change from the centralized placement system we now have would guarantee that people would spend their last years in their home town.
Leveraging the Grey Gables facility to retain Long Term Care beds, add a different level of residential care for seniors or the disabled, AND free up money for other services in the County for seniors or others, seems to be the clearest path forward for the greatest good for the greatest number.
These are some of the considerations that shaped my current position.
Respectfully,
Ted Stewart PT