[Report] Billions More Reasons to Care: Contracted Long-Term Care-Funding Review Update

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In this report, Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie provides a second review into government’s funding of publicly subsidized for-profit and not-for-profit operated long-term care homes and has again found spending differences impacting care for residents, many cost increases exceeding inflation, a lack of clarity on many reported expenses and inequitable funding for capital assets. The report Billions More Reasons to Care is a follow up to a report released in early 2020 looking at the same issues.

Highlights:

The report examined five years of financial reports for over 90% of B.C.’s publicly subsidized contracted long-term care facilities and found that between 2017/18 and 2021/22:

• Direct care staffing costs increased 33%;
• Indirect care staffing costs increased 33%;
• Building costs increased 18%;
• Supplies and administrative costs increased 61%; and
• Profit increased 113%.

The report found patterns of spending were different in for-profit facilities compared to not-for-profit facilities including:

• Not-for-profit facilities spent 25% more on resident direct care and 27% more on indirect care than for-profit facilities;
• For-profit facilities spent 66% more per bed on building costs than not-for-profit facilities;
• For-profit facilities earned 7 times as much profit as not-for-profit facilities; and
• Not-for-profit facilities delivered 93,000 hours more of direct care than they were funded to deliver and for-profits delivered 500,000 hours less than they were funded to deliver in 2021/22.

The report includes four recommendations:

1. Funding for care must be spent on care.
2. Improve accuracy and transparency of monitoring and reporting for compliance with publicly funded care hours.
3. Define profit.
4. Make revenues and expenditures for publicly funded care homes available to the public.

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