“Provincial standards outdated, more small-scale care homes needed.”

Building plans for Toronto’s Rekai Centre’s Cherry Street location

A downtown Toronto long-term care home is rebuilding with a new design that considers lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, going beyond the province’s standards but some say those standards are out of date.

“Many of the planned updates at the 13-storey facility on Cherry Street were
brainstormed during the pandemic as shortfalls were brought to light,” said CEO, Sue Graham-Nutter. “The changes made by the Rekai Centre are a good start,” according to Dr. Samir Sinha, a geriatrician, clinician scientist and the Director of Health Policy Research at the National Institute on Aging (NIA).

“If you think about palliative care hospices, if you think about group homes for younger people don’t have them living in large institutional settings,”   Sinha said. “So why is it that in North America we only do this with frail, older people?” (Dr. Sinha, There’s No Place Like Home Report/National Institute on Ageing)

Sinha said long-term care should be moving towards a “small care homes” model of 10 to 12 people, each with their own private bedroom and bathroom. Larger buildings can be broken up into multiple 12-person households and still follow the model, he said.

To learn more about the building plans for the new Rekai Centre, click here.