New voluntary standards released today for long-term care homes devastated by the pandemic – CBC

The voluntary standards are meant to shore up a sector that saw a massive number of pandemic deaths

Jan 31, 2023

Promised new national standards for long-term care homes in Canada have now been published — part of Ottawa’s attempt to avoid a repeat of the alarming death tolls in long-term care homes that marked the early phase of the pandemic.

The Health Standards Organization (HSO) published 60 pages of comprehensive standards Tuesday, to complement the release of 115 pages of standards from the Canadian Standards Association Group (CSA) in December. The federal government launched the standards project in the spring of 2021.

Both organizations were tasked with coming up with standards to improve the quality of care in long-term care (LTC) homes across the country. The HSO focused on the care itself and the CSA on the physical infrastructure.

While the new standards are voluntary, health experts say they won’t do the job unless LTC homes adopt all of them without exceptions.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/long-term-care-canada-standards-pandemic-1.6730780