Our Thoughts

A Labour Shortage in Healthcare. What Do We Do?

Posted on October 20, 2020 by Continyou Care

At Continyou Care, we appreciate those that dedicate their time to learn skills and pursue a career in healthcare. Deciding to work in healthcare is no small decision, with long hours and other people’s health and well-being in your hands. Recently, however, there’s been a labour shortage in healthcare, especially in senior homes. 

A labour shortage in healthcare

Looking at B.C.’s continuing care sector, a mixture of a “rapidly aging population, high worker injury rates, funding shortfalls, low recruitment, and the increasing acuity level of seniors are all contributing factors to the health human resource crisis facing long-term care, assisted living and home health care providers” according to an article by Lara Croll at hospitalnews.com. Although this article is specific to B.C., these contributing factors can be applied to all of Canada, and across North America in general.

What do we do?

What we need is more people like Ankur Jain. According to Tim Crino at Inc.com, Ankur Jain, the founder of New York City’s investment firm Kairos, decided to pair out-of-work Americans with elderly and sick patients in need of home health care. Not only that, his investment firm is providing the funding to train 10,000 workers.

Nevertheless, asking investment firms to step in and save healthcare is not sustainable. What we need are government-mandated programs designed to provide the funding, training, and professional development of a new generation of healthcare workers. As healthcare workers age, unless those growing up see a reason and incentive to enter the healthcare industry, the problem is only going to get worse.

Moving with the times

At Continyou Care, we are always looking at ways in which our platform can make life easier for staff members at senior home facilities, by allowing them to focus on high-level tasks that revolve around making your resident’s lives better and more comfortable. Our platform includes Point of Sale functionality, allergen tracking, menu management, digital signage, recreation calendar management, and maintenance request tracking, all while giving you a breadth of analytics to make more data-centric decisions. To find out more or request a demo, click here!