Enhancing staffing resources, CQI in homes, examining infrastructure are key areas for sector: CEO
Christina Bisanz commends the job membership homes are doing
Thursday June 25, 2009 -- Deron Hamel
MARKHAM - Enhancing staffing resources, examining home infrastructure to meet other care needs and continuous quality improvement (CQI) are areas the long-term care sector needs to continue to focus on, says Christina Bisanz, CEO of the Ontario Long Term Care Association (OLTCA).

Christina Bisanz, OLTCA CEO

Bisanz adds that the sector has already been moving forward in these directions, and she applauds the job the province’s long-term care homes have been doing to meet the sector’s needs as it continues to evolve.

Of note, Bisanz says the sector has been adapting well to the changing demographics of residents.

“The sector has already been moving forward for some time, in terms of how it needs to adapt and adjust, first and foremost, to an aging population, and an aging population that has increasingly more complex-care needs for people who are living longer and longer,” she says.

This means the sector needs to look at how it can be increasingly effective with the resources available and to continue to look at solutions to challenges that come with meeting the demands of human-resource shortages in gerontology and treating dementia and other complex-care needs.

“These are all challenges that I think that our members are addressing full-on, and addressing in a way that is confined in many respects by limited resources,” says Bisanz.

Bisanz notes that there’s also an opportunity for the sector to look at the infrastructure within individual homes to help alleviate wait times in hospitals. The high calibre of expertise membership homes possess, she says, is ideal for helping to meet the demands of an increasingly strained health-care system.

The OLTCA, says Bisanz, is positioned to help structure and implement health-care policies to help meet those needs.

“There really is an opportune time now for the OLTCA to take leadership in helping to shape and define the way some of those policies and structures move forward,” says Bisanz.

“As CEO, my role and my desire is really to facilitate that embracing of the change in tide and the challenging times.”

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