Ontario missed interim target for providing hands-on care to long-term care residents

Ontario failed to meet its own target this past year for the average number of hands-on hours of care that long-term care residents receive, a newly updated document shows.

Ontario failed to meet its own legislated target this past year for the average number of hands-on hours of care that long-term care residents receive, a newly updated document shows.

The province says it has since reached its goal for the 2023-24 fiscal year, but that happened outside of the timeframe the Progressive Conservative government set out in a 2021 law.

The government says it continues to work toward its next target of ensuring residents get four hours per day of direct care from nurses and personal support workers by the end of the current fiscal year next March.

The first- and second-year interim targets were met, but the target of three hours and 42 minutes by March 31 of this year was missed.

This fall, officials added that information to the bottom of a 2020 staffing plan posted on the Ontario government’s website without saying anything publicly — a move that has opposition critics crying foul over transparency.

The updated version of the report says that in the first quarter of the 2024-25 financial year, Ontario “exceeded” its direct hours of care target from the year before.

“In total, the province has provided more than an hour of additional direct care to Ontario’s long-term care residents through this government’s unprecedented investments. This is a 33 per cent increase in direct care since 2021,” the report reads.

A document previously obtained by The Canadian Press through a freedom-of-information request shows that bureaucrats warned the long-term care minister’s predecessor about a year ago about the risk of missing the targets.