Extendicare's Improving Care Plan
We have embarked on a new, multi-year national plan to improve care, every day, across every home we operate. We are focused on five key areas for improvement.
1. Improve the quality of life for those we care for
Eliminate multi-unit bedrooms. Every one of our residents deserves increased privacy to enhance their quality of life. There will be no more than two residents per room in any home regardless of the home’s age. All new long-term care homes are being constructed to modern design standards, with one person per bedroom.
Increase the number of full-time positions on our care teams, providing our team members with greater stability and our residents with more consistency in their caregivers. To allow for more full-time positions we have introduced a new, dedicated weekend shift for team members who prefer this option. During the last year, Extendicare has added more than 1,000 new frontline caregivers to our long-term care homes to enhance the quality of care for our residents.
Improve and add to our clinical capabilities, including through partnerships with hospitals, like The Ottawa Hospital, and our other health-care partners.
2. Support the success of our team
Improve infection and prevention control, including by supporting more of our team members to receive specialized training in advanced IPAC practices through IPAC Canada’s endorsed Certificate in Infection Control (CIC).
Offer paid time off over and above regular sick leave, exceeding government requirements and our obligations under existing bargaining agreements. This was put in place shortly after the pandemic started.
Launch a peer-nominated Care Champion program, open to all of our long-term care team members to celebrate the hard work, dedication and passion of our incredible teams who go above and beyond for their residents and communities.
3. Engage residents and families as partners in care and organizational change
Improve communication and engagement with residents and families. We are working hard to redesign the standard of materials you receive, with the clear expectation that all residents and their families are kept informed through regular newsletters, home and corporate-level communications and activities, monthly townhalls and regular family and resident council meetings.
These efforts to improve resident and family interactions will be informed by the feedback we receive from you at [email protected] and from the Family and Resident Satisfaction Surveys.
4. Replace or upgrade older long-term care homes
Replace every older home in our network across the country. Starting with 20 recently announced projects in Ontario, we are investing $500 million to construct new homes to modern design standards.
Upgrade or enhance our homes regardless of age to ensure that IT capacity does not stand in the way of connections with loved ones. We are actively working to upgrade Wi-Fi at every home in our network.
Make improvements in our existing buildings to improve air conditioning and upgrade furniture that can be easily wiped down and sanitized to better maintain infection prevention and control.
Work with government partners in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to enable us to renew homes in those provinces. We remain ready to invest in building new homes to modern standards with any province that is ready to partner with us.
5. Increase transparency and accountability
Access to real-time information about your loved one’s care environment is important. Vaccination rates among residents and team members are available to families and the broader public.
Operate with increased openness and transparency, steadily increasing access to quality information about each home in our network, published openly to enable our outcomes to be compared to other operators.
Remove barriers to vaccination for our team members and provide resources nation-wide, through educational sessions, virtual townhalls with trusted leaders and experts, translating support materials into 20 languages, paid time off and travel expenses to attend vaccination clinics and more.
