Business View - March 2015 127
a way that’s similar to what’s happened in the U.S., in
terms of senior housing. So, it’s a sector that contin-
ues to grow. It’s a sector that continues to evolve and
diversify, and so, with those changes, we have evolved
as well. And so back in 1992, the association, for ex-
ample, made a decision to develop industry standards
for the sector, because at that time, there were no
regulations guiding the sector and it was a huge con-
cern for risk management, and, really, for the sector.
So, the ORCA accreditation program was born at that
time. It has evolved a number of times over the years
and was re-launched last year. Prior to five years ago, it
was actually mandatory to be accredited to be a mem-
ber of the organization and we represented about 65
percent of the sector. Since then, we’ve made the de-
cision with the onslaught of a lot of regulations in the
sector, that we would open the door to everyone and
anyone in our sector joining. So, accreditation is no
longer mandatory. However, what it did do was give us
access to people that we hadn’t had previously, and
we now represent roughly 93 percent of the sector,
and the real impetus for that growth is that we made
a decision back at that time to focus entirely on the
needs of our members and to ensure that we were
able to provide them with all of the tools and training
that they would need to be in compliance with every
regulation impacting the sector in Ontario.
BUSINESS VIEW: In terms of numbers, what is the
membership number that you guys have now?
JOHNSTON:
Well, we currently have 540 homes as
members and we represent about 48,600 suites in the
sector. Primarily, these are homes that are licensed in
the province of Ontario, although we do have indepen-
dent living as well.
BUSINESS VIEW: You said that’s 90 percent plus of
the market that you’re aiming for?
JOHNSTON:
It is. It’s 93 percent of all the suites in the
province. There are some very small homes that are
less than ten beds, for example, that are not members.
But, we are representative of all of the large chains.
BUSINESS VIEW: You mentioned that changing the
accreditation threshold boosted the available mem-
bership, any other segments of the membership that
have grown significantly lately?
JOHNSTON:
Well, again, our chains continue to grow.
A third of our membership remains the small, inde-
pendent owner, and that has grown, because what
we did as well, was create some pretty significant
tools to support our members in compliance. For ex-
ample, we created an online e-learning platform that
provides front-line staff training, 26 modules actually,
covering every piece of mandatory training under all
legislation that impacts our sector. So, we have over
20,000 users on that right now and it actually tracks
all of the training for your staff. It’s quite sophisticat-
ed and we’ve developed all of the modules, not only
with operators so that it is sector- specific, but also
with subject matter experts to ensure that it’s credible
and a number of our chains are started to use it for all
of their homes, even outside of Ontario, and we are
partnering with Alberta this year to launch it in their
province as well. So, that is one example besides ac-
creditation, of things that we are offering to members.
We’ve created from template toolkits a very compre-
hensive operations manual, that’s fully integrated into
our training, but also electronic, so that members have
access to that to download all of these policies and
procedures. And these are things that we believe are
unique. We certainly don’t know of anything like this
in the U.S. or anywhere else in Canada. And then, just
recently, we launched our new database, which is go-
ing live in June. And it is based somewhat on the NIC
MAP in the U.S., and in fact, it was developed in part
with the company that created the original NIC MAP
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