Established in 2017, the Seniors Safety and Quality Improvement Program aims to enhance safety and quality of life for residents living in publicly-funded long-term care homes in British Columbia. With funding of $10 million provided by the BC Ministry of Health, the program allowed care providers to purchase new equipment and technology to enhance the lives of those living in care.

This report finds evidence to support the hypothesis that—in addition to promoting the safety and well-being of seniors in care homes—the Seniors Safety and Quality Improvement Program helped improve the safety of workers in long-term care.

With respect to medium-sized organizations, those funded by the program made more significant improvements than their unfunded counterparts and also performed favourably with respect to injury rates and time-loss claims. With respect to workdays lost, while the funded organizations started with an overall higher average number of workdays lost, they made significant improvements such that their average was comparable to organizations without funding by the end of the period.