Long term care funding increase: workers bear the brunt

Four months into the fiscal year, and we now know that long term care funding per bed is going up 1.47% in Ontario.

The LTC funding envelope that will get the biggest increase will be "Raw Food", which will see a 3% increase effective July 1. (The 3% is not counting a commitment by the government to continue extra raw food funding of 1.8% that was supposed to expire June 30).

Other funding envelopes that are connected to wages for long term care workers (raw food is not connected) will see a much more modest increase effective April 1: just slightly less than 1% for the "Nursing and Personal Care" and "Program and Support Services" envelops.

While raw food costs are not affected by LTC wages, these two areas most definitely are. In other words, long term care workers are being asked to bear the main role in containing costs.

Accommodation funding (the one envelope where owners can rake off a profit) will get a 2.1% increase effective July 1 (again not counting a commitment by government to continue extra accommodation funding of 1.4% that was supposed to expire June 30).

The 1.47% increase per bed falls short of the 2.8% total LTC increase promised in the provincial Budget document, so some growth in the total number of beds may be anticipated. Government Budget figures suggest that total provincial LTC funding this year is about $3.715 billion.

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