It has been weeks since Provincial Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry said they wanted to have long term care employees working at a single facility and it is still trying to facilitate that change.

Provincial Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry says it is an extremely challenging change to organize.

“Not only is it in, particularly in the lower mainland, the volume of long term care homes and people who are working at them, but they also work sometimes in home care or as paramedics or in acute care.”

Health Minister Adrian Dix spoke to how its impacting the governments purse.

“With respect to the financial implications of making this change, government is working on understanding the costs associated with the provincial health officer’s direction. We anticipate it will be in the neighbourhood of $10 million a month.”

Henry says part of the reason it has taken so long is to avoid having gaps in care.

“What we didn’t want is for things to happen so that people only went to one or two places and there were people who were left without staff, or care homes that were left without staff and that is the really important thing. So we have focused it. Focusing on the long term care homes where there are outbreaks already.”

Dix says with the workers in question we are talking about 50 to 60 different collective agreements, so there is a lot of complexity, but there has been a lot of determination on the part of everyone.

“This involves directly, right now we think 4,200 workers who will effectively have where they’re working change in this period. We had to consult with some 20,000 workers and in some health authorities this has happened more quickly than others, but this is of course an exceptional change.”