Ontario home care "wait list" turns into the home care "forget list".

As often noted in this space, the Ontario Liberal government claims they are expanding community care to make up for all the cuts to hospital care.

Well now it looks like even the Toronto Star can't quite swallow that one. Today, Star luminary Bob Hepburn follows up his recent column on cuts to home care with another one (Chilling tales of home-care crisis call for action) and its worth a read. Here's an excerpt:

D’Andrea is one of tens of thousands of Ontario residents affected in the past year by the quiet move by government agencies that connect patients with community health services to slash funding for all except what they deem to be the worst cases. Such critical services include those provided by speech-language pathologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dieticians, nurses and others. The result is that patients are now getting just a fraction of the help they really require or are forced to go on lengthy wait lists. At the same time, highly skilled health professionals who serve these patients have seen their caseloads cut dramatically or, in a rapidly growing number of cases, have been laid off from their jobs.These are clear signs that community care is in crisis. But while all this turmoil has been happening, there’s been almost total silence from Queen’s Park politicians, including Premier Dalton McGuinty, Health Minister Deb Matthews and ordinary MPPs.

So forget the Liberal excuses. They are squeezing hospital services and home care services.

dallan@cupe.ca

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