Two tier home care. Privatized health care keeps creeping in while Liberals look the other way

While the Ontario government claims that expanded home care services are the answer to hospital cuts, the reality on the ground is a little different.

The Hamilton Spectator reports that "patching together services from the CCAC, as well as private home health care agencies, is becoming more the norm as families struggle to help ailing family members stay in the home."

"If they don't get enough hours from the CCAC we top them up," Yvonne Griggs chief executive officer of Alert Best Nursing and Home Care Solutions reports. Families pay almost $24 an hour for a personal support worker who does meal preparations and help clients, who are mostly elderly, with bathing, exercises, and walking.

Even Progressive Conservative health critic Christine Elliott says this is creating a two-tier system where those who can afford more services get better care.

"What's happening in Hamilton is indicative of what's happening across the province. CCACs are being overwhelmed with requests for service. The whole situation is becoming rapidly worse. This is a group of people who deserve much better than what they're getting."

For her part, the Health Minister, Deb Matthews, says more money is being funneled into home care, adding there is “absolutely no truth to the suggestion that there is a cut to the funding. It's quite the opposite. There's been an increase and they will be getting more this year.”

dallan@cupe.ca

Comments

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data. This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization. Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion. That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year. The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million. In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...

The long series of failures of private clinics in Ontario

For many years, OCHU/CUPE has been concerned the Ontario government would transfer public hospital surgeries, procedures and diagnostic tests to private clinics. CUPE began campaigning in earnest against this possibility in the spring of 2007 with a tour of the province by former British Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, who talked about the disastrous British experience with private surgical clinics. The door opened years ago with the introduction of fee-for-service hospital funding (sometimes called Quality Based Funding). Then in the fall of 2013 the government announced regulatory changes to facilitate this privatization. The government announced Request for Proposals for the summer of 2014 to expand the role of "Independent Health Facilities" (IHFs). With mass campaigns to stop the private clinic expansion by the Ontario Health Coalition the process slowed. But it seems the provincial Liberal government continues to push the idea. Following a recent second...

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staﬃng. Less and less of hospital spending is on staff. Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development. It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staﬀ per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staﬃng capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...

Defend Public Healthcare

Search This Blog