Support Family Caregivers with Innovation, Flexibility and Choice

Home First Alliance for Patients Urges Government to do the Right Thing for Family Caregivers

ONTARIO, April 3, 2018 /CNW/ - On National Family Caregiver Day, the Home First Alliance for Patients is urging the government of Ontario to do the right thing and invest in more flexibility and choice at the front lines of home care, rather than in more layers of bureaucracy. The government of Ontario is moving forward to create a government-run agency for Personal Support Workers (PSWs) that will divert scarce health care resources away from the front lines of care, exacerbate a PSW labour shortage and cause turmoil in the home care sector.

Family caregivers deserve better from this government. They need more flexibility and choice in the way services are provided to their loved ones. Current home care providers have been developing innovative models to support these caregivers, but they need the government to stop wasting health care resources and come to the table to find collaborative solutions that will expand these models and break down the barriers to flexibility and choice that currently exist in the system.

A new government run agency is not the answer to change the home care system so it can better respond to patients and caregiver needs. Home First Alliance for Patients, whose members deliver 95% of publicly-funded home care in Ontario, have developed expertise in the provision and management of this care over decades in some cases. Ignoring that expertise in favour of an untested government run-agency does not make sense.

If the government truly wants to open the doors for innovation and improvement in the home care sector, they should work with experienced providers to modernize the strict rules governing the sector that do not take into account patient and family choice and do not allow for the flexibility patients and their caregivers need.

On National Family Caregiver Day, the Home First Alliance for Patients is asking the government to do the right thing and immediately reverse their decision to create a government run agency that will not offer the appropriate oversight, support or expertise for patients, caregivers and their families. Instead we are asking that they invest in a modernization of the home care sector that takes into account what patients and caregivers want and truly delivers flexibility and choice, not bureaucracy and wasteful health care spending.

About the Home First Alliance for Patients

The Home First Alliance for Patients is a coalition of home care service providers who together deliver 95% of publicly funded home care. The Home First Alliance for Patients was started in response to the Ministry of Health decision to create a government-run agency for PSWs without any consultation with patients, caregivers or providers. On February 20^th 2018 the Home First Alliance for Patients launched a legal action asking the courts to review the appropriateness of this decision.

SOURCE The Home First Alliance for Patients