Re-announcing homecare re-announcements

In a media release yesterday, the government re-announced 3 million hours in personal support services for home care (among other re-announcements and one bona-fide announcement). The hours were also re-announced ten days ago in another media release as well as way back in January, in the government's "Action Plan for Health Care" and the Health Minister's speech on the Action Plan (to the corporate crowd at the Toronto Board of Trade).

At that time of the Action Plan, I made some rather unkind remarks about the smallness of this particular contribution in light of what it was supposed to achieve.

But as it turns out, I was not unkind enough. The government did not indicate in the Health Care Action Plan that the promise was to fund 3 million hours "over the next three years". Naive me -- I thought they meant to do it in a year!

The two re-announcements in May, however did let us in on this fact. So I guess re-announcements do have some use -- at least for us researchers, if no one else.

We are still waiting details on the Action Plan's commitment to increase access "to house calls from health care professionals, like doctors, nurses and occupational therapists." As noted Wednesday, home care health care services (as opposed to home care personal support services) have been squeezed hard in recent years.

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