Long-Term Care Policies to Integrate National Standards: The LTC-PINs Project

Long-term care homes (LTCHs) have been an underfunded sector in the Canadian healthcare system for decades. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated these challenges, with added pressures of staffing shortages and negative stigma related to the homes, the staff and their leadership. There is a need to implement national standards for LTCHs to ensure the delivery of quality care. As a response to this need, the Health Standards Organization (HSO) established the Long-Term Care Technical Committee in 2020. Led by Dr. Samir Sinha, 32 Technical Committee members with expertise in long-term care (residents, family members, health care providers, researchers, etc.) came together to develop a National Long-Term Care Services Standard. Although this is a great step to ensure the delivery of safe and high-quality long-term care services, a better understanding of how these standards will be taken up in the LTCHs is needed. The goal of the LTC-PINs Project is to understand the experiences and perspective of LTCH administrative staff and those directly involved in policy development and implementation as they implement the National Long-Term Care Services Standard. Specifically, we want to know what they need to develop these required policies from a development, implementation and evaluative perspective in order to successfully implement the National Long-Term Care Services Standard. From this, our team will draft a policy and knowledge dissemination plan. We will then invite key stakeholders to a round-table research and policy workshop to discuss the draft policy. Recommendations will be formulated and the final policy will be available for LTCH use. The LTC-PINs Project is the first step along a much longer journey to restore trust and build a better future for LTCHs in Canada.