Frontenac County Council

Jeff Green | Jan 28, 2015

Absenteeism at Fairmount Home concerns new council

Throughout the 2011-2014 term of council, former Frontenac County councilor, David Jones (Frontenac Islands), spoke at length and with considerable vitriol about the absenteeism rate at Frontenac Paramedic Services.

Now that Jones is gone, North Frontenac Mayor Ron Higgins seems to have taken up the torch, in a less aggressive way.

In response to the year-end absenteeism report for 2014, which was presented to Council at their January 21 meeting, Higgins said “When I see this report it appears there is a problem at Fairmount Home, but without some information about the size of the workforce, the percentage of absenteeism to overall hours, and possibly something to compare the rate at Fairmount to other similar-sized facilities, I really don't know what it means,” he said.

The report showed that the total hours lost to absenteeism at Fairmount reached a three-year high in 2014. 14,800 hours were lost in 2012; however, the number dropped to 11,519 in 2013, and then jumped to 16,040 in 2014.

By contrast, Frontenac Paramedic Services hit a three-year low in 2014, losing 18,923 hours as compared to 21,913 in 2013 and 19,653 in 2012.

The other category of worker covered in the report, those who work in corporate services at the county office, saw a return to historic levels after a spike in 2013. In 2014, 399 hours were lost to illness, as compared to 977 in 2013, and 481 in 2012.

Frontenac County ratepayers pay a small portion of the operating costs of both Fairmount Home and Frontenac Paramedic Services, which receive significant finding from the Province of Ontario and the City of Kingston. County ratepayers pick up the entire cost of Corporate Services, however.

County Chief Administrative Officer Kelly Pender said that staff are working on an improved absenteeism report.

“We recognize that the report does not give council members the kind of useful comparative information to help them provide proper oversight,” he said.

The other missing piece of information, according to Ron Higgins, “is any sort of root cause analysis of why people are calling in sick in these numbers.”

Community Paramedicine Initiative:

A pilot project to come up with a viable community paramedicine initiative for Kingston and Frontenac County, which received $158,000 in provincial funding, has seen half of the money spent on a study to be completed by a Queen's professor.

The $81,000 project includes research into existing paramedicine projects based on a detailed literature scan, a list of potential partners in the project. The contract will be completed by the inclusion of a “demonstration program logic model to guide implantation and evaluation of a demonstration home visit/wellness program aimed at addressing the needs of the community, and to support healthy aging in the home across the geographical area of the County of Frontenac and the City of Kingston,” to use the wording of the Queen's University proposal.

Councilor John McDougall was underwhelmed by the proposal.

“My difficulty with this is that we are going to get high level information back when the goal is to establish a solid framework for future core paramedic programs and a communication plan .... this looks like a lot of things we could already pull up from what has been done before,” he said.

Gale Chevalier, the Deputy Chief of Frontenac Paramedic Services who is leading the entire paramedicine initiative, agreed with McDougall, in part.

“You are correct, we went out with an RFP [Request For Proposal] to see if we could get all of the work done to get a program up and running, and no one responded to it. But one thing we do need done in any case is the research part, which is something we do not have the internal expertise to do, so this covers that part off. I agree this project from Queen's is not developing the communications link,” she said.

“They are going to do a literature review and provide information but the onus is still on you to move this forward beyond that,” said Councilor Natalie Nozzal (Frontenac Islands) to Chevalier.

“Communications is a large part of this. There will need to be budget money for that because Queen's will not deliver it,” said Ron Higgins.

“I still think that the part that Queen's is going to provide has already been done.” said McDougall.

Despite the stated reservations, Council approved a motion to enter into the $81,000 contract with Queen's. Councilor McDougall voted against the motion.