LITTLE CURRENT—Days before Christmas, the Management Board of Manitoulin Centennial Manor met for its monthly meeting. The arrangement of agenda items had to be revised as Keith Clament (Extendicare), was delayed.
Don Cook, administrator, brought everyone up to date with the Tree of Lights Campaign. “With most fundraising, we are behind last year, with the mail strike. But we put a bigger ad in the paper, and the ones that weren’t delivered, we did mail out. So, we’ll just let the campaign go a little longer, because we just sent the rest of those mailings out. It is coming along. The latest total was about $16,000 and we’ve got more coming in, probably getting close to $20,000,” he said.
“We have a donor who likes to donate to something different to what our usual campaign is. We have some room downstairs, things have changed, we don’t use all the space like we used to, so we can make a ‘family suite,’ a sitting area where we can put a murphy bed and a little washroom with a shower stall, a kitchenette. So that, particularly when someone is in the palliative room, we’ve got some place for family to stay, especially if they’re from out of town. And this anonymous donor is interested in funding that – on a multi-year deal. So, they stopped in yesterday and gave me a cheque for $10,000 to get started,” Mr. Cook shared with the board.
When Mr. Clament arrived, there was a brief in camera session, to discuss salaries, at which point Don Cook, Sandie Dubreuil (DOC) as well as The Expositor left the meeting. Once the in camera portion was completed, Extendicare took the board through the budget. Mandeep Dhindsa, accountant, took all present through each detail of the report, with questions asked and answered along the way. “If you want to see a complicated approach to how organizations are funded it’s the Ministry of Long-Term Care. It’s not easy to follow,” quipped Keith Clament at one point.
The agency costs are being addressed but remain an issue. The nursing envelope is over budget, but the numbers from November are not all that bad, due to “one-time” funding that the Manor received from the province earlier in the year. Major upcoming expenses, a new generator among other things, will have to be addressed in 2025, but after lengthy discussion and one amendment, the 2025 budget was approved.
The financial statement for November 2024 was covered with Mr. Clament taking everyone through it. “The story for November is good news,” he began. “Thankfully, we’re going into December in a good position and we’re going into January in a good position. That’s really the highlight. In terms of November, that was the biggest area I wanted to talk to you about—we’re still overspent in nursing, primarily because of the agency costs, but we were overspent by nearly $300,000 in the month of October, and we’ve been able to substantially reduce that.”
“We were also able to recover about $8,000 on the wage enhancement,” Mr. Cook interjected. “And there will also be about a $9,000 credit from the agency that will appear in December’s financial statement.”
“Our bottom line is still good, but our commitment to the board is that we will make sure, going into January, that we’ll stay on budget. Unless something drastic happens, we will see a surplus.”
Correspondence was next on the agenda. Mr. Cook told the board, “We applied for some one-time funding, and we were successful with them. We got a total of $69.326.”
Sandie Dubreuil explained where this funding would be applied. “A huge deficiency, being in a rural community, is getting timely results, if we’re in an outbreak, whether we’re dealing with COVID, or influenza, because our samples get collected here, and go to the lab in Little Current, then they courier them to Public Health. If Public Health is backed up, then it’s shipped to Timmins. So sometimes it’s three days to a week before we’d have results on what a resident has. The only thing we can get immediately from the hospital is COVID results and those are being phased out. So, I had applied for funding for a testing bay machine. Now we will be able to run our own tests in house for Influenza, RSV and COVID, and get results within 10 minutes. And then we can still use that sample that we took and send it off to Public Health to get a panel, but the results are recognized by Public Health and everyone. So, that should help with outbreak management much more efficiently. Hopefully, we’ll have this up and running potentially by February.”
Geriatric beds will also be purchased with the funding received. From now on, any new bed purchased will be able to convert to a geriatric bed.
The administrator’s report followed. “No empty beds at present,” Mr. Cook told the board. “No outbreaks at present. There are eight nursing staff off on medical leave. We continue to work on the plan to increase staffing levels that will both provide enhanced care to residents, as well as being able to cover staff sick calls and time off without the use of agency staff.”
One older tub and a commercial washing machine that need replacing were mentioned in Mr. Cook’s report but had previously been discussed in the budget.
The administrator ended his report with the resident family Christmas dinner. Over 60 guests attended and had a great meal and a lovely time. He thanked the staff for all their hard work in making the day a success. He also noted the Santa Christmas party would follow on the 21st of December, and he told the board members how successful the ‘Be a Santa to a Senior’ campaign had been. “We had people coming in, wanting to take a tag to buy gifts for our residents and they were actually disappointed there were no tags left.” In fact, the board room was filled with the gifts that the residents would receive at the Christmas Party on the 21st.
The meeting wrapped up and adjourned with homemade Christmas cookies and coffee.
by Margery Frisch