Bill loved to walk, but the COVID pandemic curbed his movement and his spirit
By: Moira Welsh
It’s not unexpected that an older person forced to stay immobile would develop a blood clot, said Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA. “One of the common things we see is increased blood clots. People on long-haul flights who are not getting up and walking around are much more likely to get a blood clot,” Sinha said.
Desperate long-term care reforms require a big-picture vision
By Bonnie-Jeanne MacDonald Contributors Michael Nicin
COVID-19 showed us that maintaining the status quo for LTC in Canada is an unacceptable path. Financial projections by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) show it’s also expensive and financially unsustainable.
COVID-19 exposed horrors in long-term care. What should Ottawa do next?
By Alex Ballingall
Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing, said this “jurisdictional bun fight” over long-term care is a problem. After the 2015 election, when he was advising the Liberal government during negotiations for a new national health accord, Sinha said provinces wanted money for long-term care with no federal strings attached.
City-run long-term-care homes have seen fewer COVID-19 deaths. Are staff wages the reason?
By Jennifer Pagliaro and David Rider
I think what’s tragic about this is that we have our military called in to lend an extra pair of hands, but what they saw were staff afraid to use (personal protective equipment) or staff who may not have had the right training to use it. There were systemic issues that were not the result of the pandemic alone. They were part of long-standing systemic issues.
The Star published an investigation into long-term care in 2003. What’s changed since then?
By Moira Welsh
I think what’s tragic about this is that we have our military called in to lend an extra pair of hands, but what they saw were staff afraid to use (personal protective equipment) or staff who may not have had the right training to use it. There were systemic issues that were not the result of the pandemic alone. They were part of long-standing systemic issues.
Is it depression? Does dad need reminders to eat? Family seeks answers to father’s 22 pound weight loss in retirement home
By Moira Welsh
Dr. Samir Sinha, said homes’ interpretation of government directives, or their additional rules, can have an adverse impact on fragile seniors. “There is a saying we have that is called ‘good policy, bad practice,’ ” Sinha said. “The challenge I am seeing here with my patients living in retirement homes is that there is no policy that says in a home without an outbreak communal dining is not allowed. I’ve seen homes isolating seniors in their rooms when there is no reason to.”
Canada’s nursing home crisis: 81 percent of coronavirus deaths are in long-term care facilities
By Moira Welsh
Dr. Samir Sinha recounts the doctor-patient telephone call when the woman told him of her secret exercises, weeks into lockdown in a home with no cases of COVID-19. “She said, ‘None of us are allowed to leave our rooms right now,’” recalls Sinha, director of geriatrics for Sinai Health System. The patient explained her routine and, says Sinha, asked, “‘You are OK with that, right?’ “And I said abso-fricking-lutely. I don’t see why you can’t do these things — with appropriate physical distancing,” Sinha says.
“That was her little act of defiance.” Sinha is says if the woman lived in a home with a COVID outbreak, his advice would be different.
People who care for the elderly are essential workers. It’s long past time to start treating them right
By Heather Scoffield
“COVID has revealed where the problems are and where the changes need to be,” says Michael Nicin, executive director of the National Institute on Aging. Increased unionization will likely help improving wages and conditions, he said, and the unions are indeed already pushing hard. But there’s also a need to look at why people with similar jobs in hospitals are paid so much more, and work with better protective gear. There’s demand for change on the client side of the equation as well.
COVID-19 has exposed ugly failings of our politics. Here’s how Ottawa can build on the lessons of the pandemic
By Tonda MacCharles, Bruce Campion-Smith and Alex Boutilier
The National Institute on Aging, based at Ryerson University, urges governments to consider a radical shift, one that would see more money spent to support an aging population with home- or community-based care, as opposed to care delivered in buildings housing large numbers of seniors. It points to countries like Denmark as success stories
82% of Canada’s COVID-19 deaths have been in long-term care, new data reveals
By Tonda MacCharles
The National Institute on Aging says that as of May 6, 3,436 residents and six staff members of long term care settings had died of COVID-19, representing 82 per cent of the 4,167 deaths reported as of Wednesday. Dr. Samir Sinha, research director at the institute, says it is a staggering figure, given the roughly 400,000 residents living in care homes represent just one per cent of Canada’s population.
The Proportion of COVID-19 deaths in long-term care was measured in 14 countries. Canada has the worst record.
By Patty Winsa
Independent analysis by the National Institute on Ageing’s Long-Term Care COVID-19 Tracker Open Data Working Group suggests the number of deaths in the province’s long-term-care homes, retirement homes and assisted living facilities could be as high as 1,021, according to the report.
They said there was no playbook for dealing with COVID-19 outbreak at nursing homes. There were several.
By Alyshah Hasham and Jesse McLean
The directive also advised: Wherever possible, homes would work with staff to limit the number of facilities they work at “to minimize risk of patients to exposure to COVID-19.” This was only a recommendation, and would not become a mandatory policy until a month later. “This was one of the ways that SARS was getting between facilities,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, head of geriatrics at Mount Sinai and the University Health Network. “So what did the SARS Commission say back in 2004? We have to end that practice. But we never did — because it would mean we had to fund the system better.”
The trauma will change you forever. COVID-19 has exposed problem in long-term care. Will the response fix it?
Dr. Samir Sinha started counting retirement home deaths weeks ago, watching the numbers rise as he and researchers at the National Institute on Ageing tried to track COVID in both systems.
It will take nearly a week to roll out Ontario’s emergency order for curbing COVID-19 deaths in seniors homes. Doctors say that’s risky
By Kenyon Wallace
NIA Director of Health Policy Research, Dr. Samir Sinha, said he assumed when the government brought in the emergency order that it would be effective immediately. “Every day is crucial. We’re losing lives every single day,” he said, noting that British Columbia, which saw the first case of community transmission in Canada in early March, restricted long-term-care workers to one facility two weeks ago. That province has since made personal support workers provincial employees, thereby allowing them to collect full-time wages while working at one long-term-care home. Such a move has provided stability in a profession characterized by low pay and a lack of benefits, necessitating many personal support workers to work at multiple facilities to make ends meet, Sinha said.
‘Everyone knew this could happen:’ The deadly spread of COVID-19 through Canada’s seniors’ homes
By Moira Welsh
Quality data is key to prevention, said Dr. Samir Sinha. His staff (at the National Institute on Ageing) have been trying to cobble together details of outbreaks and deaths in Ontario’s 630 long-term-care and 775 retirement homes. “It’s important so we can have an accurate picture on how the situation is unfolding,” Sinha said. “If we don’t understand these things or have the level of knowledge we need, we are likely to repeat mistakes when we have the next pandemic and make assumptions on data that was not correct.”
We don’t have a COVID-19 epidemic: deaths in long-term care show we have two
By Kate Allen and Jennifer Yang
Ontario is in the midst of two parallel COVID-19 epidemics, health experts say: one in the community at large, where there are encouraging signs that physical distancing is working, and one in seniors homes, an ongoing “disaster” whose true scope we are only beginning to see.
Telling the truth during a pandemic has its consequences
By Samir Sinha –Opinion piece
"When people look to doctors like me for advice, they often ask what I would do if it were me and my family member going through the same thing. I could not have in good conscience looked someone in the eye and said anything other than what I said to Picard — that if it were my mother in a care home not complying with evidence-based infection control practices, I would take them out. Of course, I knew that this wasn’t a practical or even possible option for the majority of families with loved ones in care. But I said it to underscore the urgency of the issue and advocate for immediate action. Every care home in Canada needs to ensure it is doing what it should, and not give their residents, their families, and their staff a false sense of security. The good news is that the article immediately drew the attention and razor sharp focus of decision makers that I work with at the provincial and federal levels. Within a week, new directives were being released in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, while the Public Health Agency of Canada even stepped in to launch new federal guidelines encouraging the widespread implementation of our iron ring formula across the country."
In this article by the Toronto Star, NIA Senior Fellow Keith Ambachtsheer is quoted discussing the NIA's latest paper, Improving Canada's Retirement Income System: A Discussion Paper for Setting Priorities by Keith Ambachtsheer and Michael Nicin.
