Tests show virus cases in health-care workers

Dr. Samir Sinha, the NIA Director of Health Policy Research, said while the number of infections found so far is low, it does reinforce the need for health-care workers to be immunized.

"Right now, they’re doing rapid antigen testing as a line of defence, but really it’s a pragmatic second best approach to the best possible thing we can do to support vulnerable people — given that hundreds have died in Manitoba alone — which is making sure everyone is vaccinated," Sinha said.

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Six positive cases of COVID-19 identified in unvaccinated health-care employees

Dr. Samir Sinha, NIA Director of Health Policy Research, said unvaccinated staff providing a negative rapid test 48 hours before a shift is not an equal substitute to being fully vaccinated.

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Home care in crisis as droves of workers leave for hospitals and nursing homes

"We’ve grossly underfunded the provision of home and community care for decades," says NIA Director of Health Policy Research, Dr. Samir Sinha. "For example, a nurse or PSW working in our publicly funded long-term care system gets paid far less than an equivalent than a person working in a publicly funded hospital."

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The Doug Ford government is saying the right things about long-term care. But fixing it will take more than words

As of Friday, 15,589 out of 29,682 COVID-19 deaths in Canada – 54 per cent – had involved LTC residents, according to the National Institute on Ageing in Toronto. So a fundamental principle that states seniors should be as safe and comfortable in a nursing home as they are in their own home, and which applies to the basic interpretation of the law, seems like a positive step.

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Ontario’s proposed long-term care fines ‘toothless,’ critics say

“If nothing that we’ve seen so far in countless cases of elder abuse have been reasons to lay any fines, I don’t know what will,” Dr. Samir Sinha, NIA Director of Health Policy Research, said in an interview. “So why bother doubling something that you’re probably not even willing to use?”

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Provinces’ top doctors reject COVID booster shots for all, for now

Dr.Samir Sinha, the Director of Health Policy Research at NIA, told QP Briefing that the science shows a booster shot is a "likely necessity," particularly among more vulnerable groups. The question to Sinha is more about when to deploy the booster shot, and which populations to prioritize. "How do we equitably distribute booster shots?" he asked, identifying what he saw as a critical question on the issue. He identified the British Columbia case study as a good one, in which seniors, front-line health-care workers and Indigenous people are prioritized for booster shots. These groups were also among the first to have access to the initial vaccine, making the timing gap suitable for them to have their booster shots soon.

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Ageing and thriving in the 21st century

An Ontario study by the National Institute on Ageing found that, at minimum, 8% of newly admitted long-term care residents could have avoided admission with the right home-based supports. As well, too may seniors then get bounced around from facility to facility, especially if they ‘break the rules’, or are in and out of hospital, factors which accelerate decline.

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'A crisis for home care': droves of workers leave for hospitals, nursing homes

Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, said the home care situation is dire. Wage parity can solve some of the problems, he said.

"A nurse working in an acute care hospital makes far more than a nurse working in a long-term care home who makes far more than a nurse working in home care," Sinha said.

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Long-term care: the limits of reform in Ontario

The government is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to train and hire staff for long-term care facilities, but retention is an issue. Dr. Samir Sinha noted that the training that attendants receive varies greatly from location to location and does not always include the emergency or skills required to care for someone with dementia.

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Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the National Institute on Ageing, said in an interview that the initial response to COVID-19 didn’t follow the precautionary principle of applying maximum precautions then easing off as the disease became better understood.

Instead, fearing they would run out of personal protective equipment, officials did the reverse, rationing masks and starting with limited precautions, then adjusting upward – at a cost of human lives.

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NACI expands recommendations for booster shots

“I’m thrilled with NACI’s recommendation today. It really has been following the science throughout the pandemic, and what it’s shows is that in Canada, in our specific circumstance, this is the right time to start giving booster shots to older adults and other high risk populations,” says Dr. Samir Sinha, NIA Director of Health Policy Research.

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Ontario is promising that nursing-home residents will be able to ‘enjoy life.’ Whether it can deliver is another matter

Will the long-term care system be dominated by new inspectors, some of whom, apparently, will come from the ranks of retired police officers? Or, will it work to help homes improve? Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, believes the “right things are being said” in terms of quality of life and care. But, Sinha asks, how can those goals be achieved without fixing “fundamental issues like staffing?

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Market Resiliency, Capital Formation, and Investing for Our Future

The sustainability of traditional public sector defined benefit (DB) plans has become front-page news and the subject of acrimonious debates usually framed in stark terms of DB versus DC (defined contribution). This either/or framing is unhelpful, Keith Ambachtsheer, Senior Fellow at NIA, writes.

It simply perpetuates the strongly held views of the defenders and critics of these two opposing pension models. Moving the pension reform yardsticks in the right direction requires that we stop this dysfunctional either/or framing and embrace a more constructive conversation about what we want our pension arrangements to achieve and what that tells us about how to design them.

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More beds doesn't equal better long-term care

NIA Director of Health Policy Research, Dr. Samir Sinha said, “We need long-term care where residents are living in homes that feel like homes, where staff are valued and supported and we are thinking of the value of residents’ lives and not just meeting their basic care needs.”

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Ontario's new bill is meant to better protect long-term care residents

"My reactions to the new bill are mixed. It's nice to see the government is trying to move forward in dealing with the long-standing issues of long-term care, but we haven't actually fixed the fundamental problems that really got us here in the first place," says Dr. Samir Sinha, NIA Director of Health Policy Research.

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Ontario is unveiling new long-term care legislation. Here's what advocates have to say

Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, says the biggest problems in long-term care aren't with the legislation.

"I think certainly there might be some things that can be improved upon, but really, the story has been that this is a government that has actually failed to use a lot of the powers that it's had," Sinha said in an interview. "The current Long-Term Care Act actually does have all these tools and has always had these tools available."

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How better building design can help improve long-term care in Canada

When experts talk about better models of elder care, nearly everyone mentions Denmark. “Canada has emerged as this great under-spender on the provision of long-term care,” says Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA. To provide that care, Canada spends about 1.2 per cent of its GDP, when the average for all 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is 1.5 per cent and more than twice that in countries like Denmark.

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Military dismisses reports that Ontario nursing home residents died of dehydration

In the absence of death investigations and autopsies elsewhere in Canada, home operators are not going to admit that people under their stewardship died of dehydration, said Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research, NIA.

“This is where these technicalities sadly allow everybody to save face and these issues continue to fester,” Dr. Sinha said in an interview. “We know that a number of basic needs were not being well met. That’s the real tragedy of all of this.”

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Baby boomers are increasingly worried about their finances heading into retirement

“Canadians retiring today are likely going to face longer and more expensive retirements than their parents,” Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, NIA Director of Financial Security Research, said in a news release.

Meanwhile, the pandemic helped shed light on where Canadians want to live as they age. After seeing daily headlines about COVID-19’s impact on long-term care homes, 70 per cent of people aged 65 or older now say they’ve changed their minds about wanting to live in a retirement or nursing home.

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Baby boomers are increasingly worried about their finances heading into retirement

75% of home care for older Canadians is provided by family. NIA Director of Financial Security Research, Dr. Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald, discusses how the lack of home care services and lower fertility rate among baby boomers creates a real problem in care for older Canadians.

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