A staff shortage at a southern Manitoba care home has led to beds being empty even as people are in desperate need of a placement.
Tory MLA Josh Guenter said the Emerson Health Centre, a care home in his Borderland constituency, has eight beds that can’t be filled owing to a lack of staff.
“We’ve got families who are trying to get their loved ones into the Emerson personal care home. We’ve been advocating for them for quite some time now, and there’s just been no movement,” Guenter said Tuesday.
CARILLON ARCHIVES
Applicants waiting for a bed in Emerson are being staged in hospitals in Altona and Morris, forcing loved ones to make the lengthy drive to visit, Tory MLA Josh Guenter said.
The facility has openings for six care aides and five registered nurses, as per the job site for Southern Health, which oversees operation of the public care home. It has 20 beds, which means the home has a near-50 per cent vacancy rate.
“You’ve got some of these individuals or people who have donated and contributed towards the care home over the years, and now they’re at the point where they’re ready to move in and they’re being told they can’t come in because of the vacancies,” Guenter said.
Shared Health issued an email statement Tuesday that failed to answer questions about the staffing shortage in Emerson.
In December, the Free Press investigated widespread staffing deficiencies that result in care home beds being unused.
For example, two sections of Boyne Lodge Personal Care Home in Carman were closed due to the lack of staff, Southern Health told the Free Press at the time. It didn’t specify how many beds were empty.
The Carman home has 105 beds — 79 in a new, main facility, and 26 in older and renovated units.
Applicants waiting for a bed in Emerson are being staged in hospitals in Altona and Morris, forcing loved ones to make the lengthy drive to visit, Guenter said.
“The NDP is allowing this issue to go on and is allowing this Emerson personal care home to die of neglect, which is absolutely wrong,” he said.
Guenter accused the NDP of axing programs instituted by the former Progressive Conservative government to prop up staffing levels, including a recruitment drive in the Philippines.
Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara shot back Tuesday, by saying the PC MLA was silent while his former colleagues cut care home staff and beds.
“He sat in that caucus for years beside health ministers who cut health care in his own community, closed personal care home beds, fired nurses, froze the wages of health-care aids in rural Manitoba, and he’s never apologized for that. Now all he’s trying to do is deflect and still not take responsibility for the damage,” the health minister said.
Rural and northern communities have higher vacancy rates due to the smaller pool of trained professionals, said Sue Vovchuk, the executive director of the Long Term and Continuing Care Association of Manitoba.
The population is getting older and the government must continue to work with internationally educated nurses to fast-track their credentials as well as provide incentives to nurses to work in smaller communities, Vovchuk said,
“We are trying to get a proactive look on that, a proactive approach, but it’s a slow burn,” she said.
Statistics Canada has reported that in the third quarter of 2023, there were nearly 34,000 staffing vacancies in long-term care homes and residential care facilities across Canada.
Manitoba issued a request for proposals for nursing agencies, which closed on Monday. The province will soon begin working with the private sector to regulate agency nurses while fulfilling the election promise to hire 1,000 health-care workers, Asagwara said.
As of September, the NDP government hired 873 net new health workers, including many personal care home staff.
The health minister did not have updated figures on Tuesday but said the government would soon share news about recruitment and retention efforts.
Southern Health’s recruitment work has included relocation and return of service incentives, paid education for uncertified workers and the offering of courses in the community, an unnamed spokesperson said Tuesday.
The region is advertising on local and regional job sites, recruiting at career fairs, colleges, universities, and high schools and has had success through student placements from Indigenous Health Internship programs, the emailed statement said.
nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca
Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer
Nicole Buffie is a multimedia producer who reports for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom in 2023. Read more about Nicole.
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