'A crisis for home care': Droves of workers leave for hospitals, nursing homes
CBC
Donna Marcaccio had been taking care of her sister, Marcia for years.
But when Marcia's condition deteriorated and she needed palliative care about a year ago, Marcaccio reached out for help from Ontario's home care system.
After waiting for a month, she found herself facing a revolving door of personal support workers, many of whom either arrived hours late or had no idea what to do. Then the last-minute cancellations started.
"I stopped it, it was just so stressful," Marcaccio said.
Nurses, personal support workers and therapists have left home care in droves during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We lost literally over 3,000 nurses and skilled therapists and personal support workers to other parts of the health-care system," said Sue VanderBent, the CEO of Home Care Ontario, which represents home-care providers in the province.
"And that is very bad news for Ontarians who are receiving home care because now our capacity is so depleted that people are just waiting at home for a home care nurse or therapist or PSW who isn't coming."
The organization achieved a 95-per-cent referral acceptance rate before the pandemic, meaning it could fulfil the vast majority of requests for home care. The current rate is 60 per cent.
"This is a crisis for home care," VanderBent said.
Home care workers left their jobs for better pay in hospitals and long-term care homes, she said.
About 900,000 Ontarians receive home care every year, she said, with 730,000 in the publicly-funded system. That means several hundred thousand people in Ontario are either receiving reduced home care services or no care at all, VanderBent said.
Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing, said the home care situation is dire.
Wage parity can solve some of the problems, he said.
"A nurse working in an acute care hospital makes far more than a nurse working in a long-term care home who makes far more than a nurse working in home care," Sinha said.
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