Turning seniors into inmates is a poor solution.
Are 'ghettos' a cure for senior care?
The Romanow report pegged home care shortage a high priority. A top official's solution is to have seniors move closer together
July 5, 2008Comments on this story
(0)Joseph Hall
HEALTH REPORTER
Every aging person who needs home care in Ontario will be able to receive it provided they are willing to do one thing.
Move out of their homes.
That's the prescription one of Ontario's top hospital administrators gives for the chronic shortage of home care services that lingers almost six years after Roy Romanow's report on the future of health care pegged it as a national priority.
"When you look at home care, you have got to say what kind of home are we providing service to?" says Dr. Robert Bell, president of Toronto's University Health Network.
"Is it a bunch of different apartments or homes scattered across the city of Toronto, or are we actually going to try to provide a supportive housing approach that actually brings together people who need similar resources so we can provide them in an effective, efficient way?"
With no spaces available in chronic care or rehab facilities, patients needing these services can do one of two things: Plug up hospital beds or receive help at home, Bell says.
But in Ontario, where Community Care Access Centres have been set up to dole home care services out, there is still far less supply than demand, despite Romanow's recommendations, Bell says.
"Because of that, we've got people sitting in more expensive acute care facilities across Toronto, across Ontario, no question," he says.
But Bell says the province's three-year, $700 million Aging at Home Strategy – announced last August – could solve the problem, provided the homes where that aging takes place are clustered together in home care enclaves.
The strategy, said former health minister George Smitherman, is aimed at bringing preventive medicine to those who would otherwise slip to institutional care.
"We're going to reach out with many more preventative, proactive strategies to try and prevent the transfer to the hospital in the first place," Smitherman says.
But, he says these strategies will not only include medical visits, but transportation to clinics, phone calls to shut-ins, ethnically sensitive services and even home-based palliative care.
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