An Ontario government mandate to put air conditioners in all nursing home rooms has saved dozens of lives, new research shows. Read MoreThe study looked at odds of mortality in long-term care homes in the province during extreme heat between 2010 and 2023.
The study looked at odds of mortality in long-term care homes in the province during extreme heat between 2010 and 2023.
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An Ontario government mandate to put air conditioners in all nursing home rooms has saved dozens of lives, new research shows.
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A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that extreme heat was associated with a significantly higher risk of death for people living in nursing homes without air conditioning compared to those with air conditioning.
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The study looked at odds of mortality in Ontario nursing homes during extreme heat between 2010 and 2023. Prior to 2020, the majority of older nursing homes in Ontario did not have air conditioning in residents’ rooms.
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The issue became news in the summer of 2020, when some nursing home residents were confined to their sweltering rooms during a heatwave because of the COVID-19 pandemic, unable to reach cooler spaces in the homes.
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The Evening Citizen
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Premier Doug Ford promised to make air conditioning mandatory in all residents’ rooms in Ontario. It took time for that promise to be fulfilled, but eventually all nursing home residents in the province had air-conditioned rooms.
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One of the authors, Dr. Nathan Stall, geriatrics lead and scientist at Sinai Health in Toronto, said nursing home residents were more likely to die during extreme-heat events, but the risk was significantly higher for those without air conditioning.
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The installation of air conditioning in all nursing homes in Ontario after 2020 resulted in 33 fewer nursing home resident deaths on extreme heat days, he said.
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Stall said the crossover study highlighted the impact of the provincial policy involving air conditioners in nursing home rooms. It also underscored that air conditioning was an essential health tool.
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“This is a commendable thing the government took on and executed with life-saving results. We should be proud of this as a public policy,” he said.
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But he said the research also raised concerns about those at high risk from extreme heat who didn’t have access to air conditioning, especially during a period when extreme heat days had increased.
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During the deadly British Columbia heat dome in 2021 in which 619 people died, the majority of the victims were older adults living in apartments without air conditioning, Stall noted. That has been the case in other parts of Canada as well.
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This past summer, the City of Toronto began offering air conditioning to low-income seniors with health needs, something also done on a bigger scale by Portland, Ore.